There was a moment while I was playing Outlast (2013) that made me scream at the top of my lungs. At 2:30AM. Waking up my neighbours. And getting me a noise complaint. As the character I was controlling pressed his back against what I took to be empty prison cells to shimmy across a ledge, arms suddenly jutted out to either side of his head and began to pull him backwards. This one moment has stuck with me, and I sometimes reflect on it and the feeling of fear that surged through my body; I had the shit startled out of me, sure – but there was something more to it than just a simple jump scare. I think back to an early moment playing F.E.A.R (2005): I approached a ladder, hit the button to start climbing down and as my character turned around– OH CRAP, SCARY GHOST CHILD! It was one of the most startled moments of my video gaming, horror watching life, but it’s only when I am reminded of it (like I was in preparing for this article) that I reflect on it. Yet, that moment from Outlast comes up frequently.
Just why is it that one jump scare could have such long lasting effects when another – at least its equal as far as shitting my pants goes – has faded with time? To answer this question, and to see what Scream Writers can learn from the Survival Horror genre, let’s first take a look at the games in question.
Outlast and F.E.A.R
In Outlast, the player takes control of Miles Upshur. Miles is an investigative journalist that is looking into the Mount Massive Asylum after receiving an anonymous email about horrific experiments taking place within the gothic walls. Right off the bat everything is wrong: the asylum is in a state of absolute chaos, the patients have gotten out and have been murdering the staff and much, much worse. This is told to Miles by a dying S.W.A.T officer. Despite the dying man’s warning to get the hell out of there, Miles – us, the player – proceeds deeper into the asylum in order to get the scoop on what’s happened…equipped with only his night vision camcorder.
Meanwhile, F.E.A.R sees the player taking control of Point Man, a member of First Encounter Assault Recon, that is sent into the Armacham Technology Corporation headquarters after it has been taken over by Paxton Fettel and his army of telepathic soldiers. Suddenly, there’s evil ghost children and hallucinations and psychic murders that make Carrie look tame. Filled to the brim with spookiness, Point Man pushes further and further into the weirdness as he attempts to capture Paxton and murder thousands upon thousands of faceless soldiers that stand in his way.
Each of these games has the player taking control of a character that proceeds deeper down the rabbit hole. However, Miles Upshur is only given a camera while Point Man is given an arsenal that includes everything and the kitchen sink: pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, a nail gun (called the penetrator), a repeating canon, particle weapons, mines, bombs, grenades, and a frickin’ rocket launcher. It’s pretty hard to be scared when you’re a walking artillery, which brings us to the next section.
The Powerlessness of the Protagonist
Outlast’s character is helpless. He can hide, he can run. He can hope to hell that Chris Walker, best described as a flesh golem, or Richard Trager, a scissor wielding madman straight out of your last night terror, don’t catch up to him. But Miles lacks Trigger Man’s weaponry, lacks even a rudimentary blunt object (e.g a lead pipe or baseball bat). Every single encounter the player has in Outlast begins with the knowledge that they are weak and helpless – perhaps you or me could take on a weak mental patient. Miles can’t. And for our journey through Outlast, we are Miles.
Every single encounter begins with us knowing we are out matched. If we want to apply this lesson from Survival Horror into our Screamplays, does it mean our heroes have to be entirely helpless too?
Of course not. Outlast and F.E.A.R work as examples that easily contrast one another. To see a better illustration of powerlessness in action, let’s compare 2001’s Silent Hill 2 (often considered the best of the series though I can’t let an opportunity pass to recommend my favorite, Silent Hill 3, and even claim enjoyment from Silent Hill 4: The Room) with its less successful sequel Silent Hill: Homecoming (2008).
A Tale of Two (Silent) Hills
Silent Hill 2 is a masterpiece of horror. Fans still talk about the creepy, mist-filled town, every horizon of which disappeared into the distance and around every corner could be lurking a grotesque abomination of flesh – a Cronenberg film played out with the atmosphere of a Japanese ghost story and the dream-like logic of a Lynch film.
In theory, Silent Hill: Homecoming should be remembered just as fondly, as it features similarly mist-shrouded streets and terrifying monsters (including one boss that does for creepy dolls what Jaws did for the ocean). Yet Homecoming has failed to pass into the cultural consciousness like Silent Hill 2 has. Silent Hill 2 was so popular that despite the film – Silent Hill (2006) – being closer in story to the first game, it still includes number two’s big baddie: Pyramid Head.
Pyramid Head is a force to be reckoned with, a walking force of violence and rape that no one wants to encounter, yet the smaller creatures of Silent Hill 2 are just as terrifying to run into. In part, this comes from the danger they represent to the player; fighting them is always a risk and, despite not always having the choice, they make the player rather flee and hide than engage in combat. Meanwhile, Silent Hill: Homecoming puts the players in the role of Alex Shepherd, a soldier returning home with all the training that being a soldier has given him (not to mention he’s named Shepherd, giving a character a permutation of Christ’s name in variably signals to us their intrinsic worth and capability). Facing off against those same monsters, Alex is able to bring a beat down that turns those once anxiety ridden encounters into just another videogame slaughterfest – the game might have atmosphere but it fails to keep the player a-scared.
What we see with these two Silent Hill games is what we saw when we compared Outlast to F.E.A.R, only to a lesser degree, a degree that is more reflective of the encounters within the horror film than either Outlast or F.E.A.R. Silent Hill 2 and Outlast present a risk-reward approach to combat and fear while Silent Hill: Homecoming and F.E.A.R offer reward without risk. When our characters are presented with a challenge that they can easily overcome, a challenge that is not a real threat to them, we are failing to create that extra element that is needed to make our horror truly memorable. Sure, maybe we’ll get a good jump scare in there, but we won’t set the foundations for a lasting, lingering, creeping-up-the-back-of-your-neck scare. Our characters should never be able to handle the situation without putting themselves, or something equally important, at risk.
To think of it another way, remember the last action movie you watched where the bad guys kept blasting away at our hero yet he never seems to get hurt? Not very exciting, was it? Contrast that with Die Hard, where John McClain can’t catch a single break, not even a pair of shoes. John McClain is just a everyman, albeit a badass of an everyman, just like most of our horror characters are; the everyman is not prepared for what she encounters, she has to adapt to the situation, to try to overcome it or avoid it. She has to survive.
So don’t go making it easy for them.
