Danse Macabre, Redux

Super 8 is out, and J. J. Abrams has established his style quite clearly: master of the let-down.

In Lost, a thousand perfectly concealed secrets wove together to end up with a cheesy group hug.

In Cloverfield, he built a marketing campaign around concealing the appearance of a monster that nobody will remember.

And now, in Super 8, he builds a marketing campaign around concealing the appearance of a monster that… well, at least he sticks to what he knows.

Now, it’s hard to criticize him too much, I mean, how could any monster fulfill our pent-up imaginations? I mean, Abrams is just following the classic rules of horror: show only shadows. The good horror writer creates the suggestion of something big and lets the audience fill in the details with they’re imagination.

Stephen King writes about it in his classic book, Danse Macabre. He also wrote about the disappointment inherent in this approach.

“The protagonist throws [the door] open, and there is a ten-foot-tall bug. The audience screams, but this particular scream has an oddly relieved sound to it. 'A bug ten feet tall is pretty horrible,' the audience thinks, 'but I can deal with a ten-foot-tall bug. I was afraid it might be a hundred feet tall.'”

It can be a sad problem, because you have no choice but to show the monster eventually. Anticipation without an eventual reveal leaves an audience feeling hopelessly ripped off. Even if a reveal can’t live up to imagination, it’s better than no reveal at all.

So, do we have to forgive J. J. Abrams and other storytellers whose reveals disappoint us? Are they doing the best possible when trapped by the limitations of surprise and imagination?

Well, no. This big a flaw in storytelling can’t be left alone as the status quo, not as long as there’s a chance to do it right.

In my last blog entry, I talked about Pyramid Head of Silent Hill 2. Now, I mentioned that I believed he was the best character design in horror history and I stand by it. That doesn’t, however, make him immune to the principles of the Danse Macabre. As good as a design as he is, it doesn’t overreach the limits of human imagination. Somewhere in our deepest fears is something worse, even more carefully tailored nightmare for the shadowy reaches of our unique fears.

So why is it, then, that he didn’t disappoint viewers and instead became a memorable design?

Well, let’s break down his first appearance. At one point in Silent Hill 2, the protagonist, James, is walking down a hallway which is separated by a set of bars. Pyramid Head is standing behind the bars.

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t react. You can get a great look at him. Oh well, at least he’s not a hundred feet tall, right?

On the surface, it seems like this does everything wrong. We should be seeing only shadows, right? Why is he showing us the whole monster in detail and even giving us time to examine it?

It might seem like the introduction of Pyramid Head defies the conventions of the Danse Macabre, but, rather, it exemplifies the principles. What Team Silent understood so well was that revelation doesn’t require the end of mystery.

Staring at Pyramid Head just standing there, we start to wonder, “Why is he just standing there? Who is he? He looks like a grizzly, murderous fiend, so why doesn’t he attack? What the hell is going on?!”

Hiding a monster’s appearance is such a limited concept because appearance is something that you can understand completely. No matter how many scaled claws, fearsome fangs or rubbery tentacles a monster has, shape leaves no room for ambiguity. Even with its appearance concealed, the Cloverfield monster must look like something, and once you get a good look, there is no more mystery for its appearance to offer. Past that, there’s really nothing to know about him. He’s a huge monster that wrecks things. It gets rid of the mystery we have but it doesn’t replace it.

Pyramid Head, on the other hand, invites us into a mystery based around understanding complex actions. The darkness of the mind is an endless labyrinth, and for each door we open another ten appear. In the end, we look back on our experience with him like the patterns of an elaborate nautilus. A web of strangeness that is satisfying in its terror.

So, here is the twist, I believe, that can let horror survive the Danse Macabre without the letdown: the promise of the next dance. Horror works when each reveal compounds a greater mystery. The reveal isn’t about the ten foot bug, it’s about the staircase the bug came down from, and how it seems a little to long for the house we’re in…and why is the bug smiling?

Cthulhu Syndrome: Horror Sequels and Diminishing Returns

I was watching a good neo-silent movie recently called Call of Cthulhu. Alright, it was actually a few months ago but shut up I’m trying to make a point. It was a faithful of adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s famous short story that everyone knows and nobody read, and kept up Lovecraft’s style of slow mysterious build-up and explosive fragmentary reveals. In the film’s explosive climax, a door to a cyclopean tomb opened and an unbelievable horror emerged… oh wait, it’s just Cthulhu.

I feel sorry for Cthulhu, he’s just not scary… which sucks for him since that’s kind of his whole shtick. Okay, I mean, I have to be fair, if I was actually in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and he popped out in front of me to start chomping heads I would probably be terrified, but in a movie he just has no effect on me. That isn’t a problem with him (her?), exactly, but it’s a problem that effects him more than perhaps any other figure: people know him too well.

The entire horror of Cthulhu, like most of Lovecraft’s work, came from mystery. Cthulhu was a weird alien presence, and his emergence into the world was to see the universe breaking. Once he’s a familiar figure though, he loses all of that. We know him from his flailing tentacles to his tiny baby wings, and people love him. People write fun songs about him. When you’re supposed to be scary, being completely known is a big disadvantage.

Ideally, though, even if he isn’t mysterious the thought of a man-eating horror should still be scary on its own right? Well, beyond just reducing the mystery, when we know and like a character, even as a horror character, we have a positive opinion of it. Even if we were afraid of it once, we won’t be afraid anymore.

As a practical example, take the great Pyramid Head of the Silent Hill series.

Now, I personally think Pyramid Head is the best character design in horror history. Team Silent built him to communicate pain and the violent potential of masculinity on a deep psychological level... and every time he showed up in Silent Hill 2 I was terrified.

Pyramid Head immediately became the mascot of the series and, in Silent Hill Homecoming he made a triumphant return. The fan reaction: He sucked. Part of it was that Homecoming wasn’t as good a game overall, but the reason why Pyramid Head, in particular, was poorly received was that he didn’t belong in a horror game anymore. Pyramid Head was so great in Silent Hill 2 that fans, or even non-fans, knew he was a great horror character, and so when he appeared the reaction wasn’t “Oh no, Pyramid Head is coming to slice me in two!” It was “Oh hey, I know that guy! What cool thing is he going to do?” Even if you’re excited because you expect something scary to happen, you’re still excited.

Over-exposure hurts all characters as they turn from interesting figures to overused memes, but horror characters are especially hurt by the syndrome. The moral of the story, sequels are especially bad for horror franchises…which sort of makes me wonder why they tend to have the most.