What is reality, anyways?
Of all the writing “rules” that the horror genre gets to play around with – see, Break – this is my favorite: Things don’t need to make sense. Now, before you start asking me questions, first let me remind you that I’ve already written this and I can’t hear you. Second, not making sense is not an excuse for the internal logic of your story to go out the window; quite the opposite, in fact – characters, events, actions, all are ruled by the internal logic of the story world.
But that logic, self-contained as it is, does not need represent the logic of daily reality. The stories we tell through the screen are inherently fiction and exist within a world wholly of their own creation. Even Based on a True Story films exist within an alternative universe: as recreations of the past, they are unable to include every shifting gear that crafted the historical event and are, therefore, a similitude of our reality rather than the capturing of that reality. And nowhere is this divergence from reality more apparent than in works of science fiction, which aim to depict a reality that might be, and horror, which perverts the reality that is.
Does your story make sense? No? Good.
In her wonderful book Attack of the Leading Ladies, Rhona J. Berenstein writes about the often incoherent plots of horror films made between 1931-1936:
“While viewers may try to make sense of storylines, they are often confronted with confusing plot twists, inconsistent character portrayals, sudden and unintended shifts of tone between horror and comedy, and narrative loose ends that go unexplained.” (p.63)
While what Berenstein here describes – specifically the unintended shifts in tone and inconsistent character portrayals – breaks the rule of maintaining internal story logic, this quote does serve to highlight just how long the horror genre has been known to throw sense out the window: since its very birth.
H.P Lovecraft, the master of cosmic horror, often began or concluded his stories with the protagonists confined to a mental institution – stark raving mad. This arose from his character’s inability – see, the ability of all human minds – to face the uncaring, unknowing void without their very minds shattering; because mankind cannot grasp or understand the cosmic terrors, the stories often exist outside of any semblance of sense.
Before you chalk up this inability to make sense to early pioneers of 20th century horror, perhaps it is best to look quickly a couple of more recent examples. It may have made sense for lightning to have resurrected the dead in Mary Shelley’s time but then what do think when it brings Jason Voorhees back from the dead in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)? It (2017) brought in over $700 million dollars but can you really argue that the film makes sense? I would say that no, it quite explicitly doesn’t.
But, what it does do, with varying degrees of success, is establish its own internal logic and, most importantly of all within the horror genre, it uses its ability to disregard sense in order to provoke terror, disgust, horror, foreboding – the very life blood of horror arises from the neglect of sense.
Understanding Horror’s Goal
I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll mention it again the future – our goal is to scare the audience. The creature from It Follows (2014) doesn’t have a backstory, it doesn’t have a logical birthplace, it doesn’t make any sense… or maybe it does, but it doesn’t matter to us watching the film; we the audience, like the characters, are thrown into a world where the curse of a succubus is passed along like an STD.
We have no idea how it started. We’re just along for the ride. And what a ride it is!
Lovecraft once wrote:
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
I absolutely love this quote because of its flexibility. On another Scream Writing we will talk about how important the reveal of a monster is and we will be exploring Lovecraft’s famous line again then.
But for the time being, I want you to think about this quote and ask yourself:
- Am I trying to explain what I don’t need to? If so, cut it out.
- Does removing the explanation of the horror increase the horror, discomfort, anxiety within my script or does it just lead to confusion? If the first, good. If the second, add it back.
Remember, you are not recreating reality.
You are making a new one.
