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Monsters are scared of you, that's why you're afraid to.
12 years ago
What I meant by that title is exactly what it said. Whether they're CGI or animatronics, monsters are always (obviously) fake. As such, they rely on the suspension of disbelief in order to strike any kind of fear in the audience watching them. Most people think the craftsmanship of the creatures themselves plays the biggest role in how frightening or unnerving the final product is. While that is important, this is false. Just like the actors, monsters are expected to convince us with a performance as well. So, how do monsters act? In theory, 'unstoppable killing machines impervious to weapons' seems scary. In practice, this is rarely the case, and it's very obvious why that is. A monster running through a hail of gunfire on a sci-fi original movie isn't frightening at all, because it's no longer believable. Suspension of disbelief is critical in the psychology of fear; some part of your mind has to be willing to consider the possibilities in order to still be afraid. If you take that away, all you will see is the "fake".
Monsters, more often then not, are a variation or aberration of some kind of animal(s), or based on the concept of animals as we know them. Animals aren't invulnerable, and usually shy away from pain and injury. Seeing one charge soldiers while absorbing bullets isn't scary, it's silly, because this creature is obviously not what the story presented it as: a living thing. The need for self preservation is something we can relate to and something we can relate to most other living things. Taking that away leaves very little left to convince you that what you're looking at isn't CGI or a puppet.
A creature that stops, retreats, hides or otherwise avoids dangers demonstrates an intelligence and behavior that you would see in most things made of flesh. This can pull even the most elaborate and ridiculous creatures into an unsettling realm of believability, because it's doing something believable. An example of this demonstrated exquisitely would be two of the most iconic creatures in horror. The Thing (1982) and Alien are two movies quite famous for being far more unnerving and creepy then any of their later iterations or spin-offs. These two movies are most certainly the 'scary ones' of their respective series, and they accomplished this with much smaller budgets then other movies of the same name. It wasn't the actors, the mood or the practical effects that made the biggest difference (even though that all helped). It was the creatures themselves that made these movies frightening, and they did it by being frightened themselves.
The Alien and The Thing were scared through the majority of those movies, and if you don't believe that, go back and watch those movies again, right now. The Thing spends most it's time hiding in different forms. It picks the humans off one by one, but it does so seemingly more for it's own safety then any malicious purpose. When it does make itself known in front of a crowd, it's usually only when it's found out or about to be found out, then it gets injured or dies. The entirety of the movie is spent with this creature trying to build a spaceship in secret. You don't build a spaceship to go more populated areas and infect more people, you build a spaceship to go to space. This creature didn't want to conquer the world like the frightened people were saying, it wanted the fuck out of there.
The Alien immediately ran after it burst out of that poor fellow's chest, then spent the remainder of the movie hiding and growing in the shadows. Again, it picked off the people it killed one by one, and it did that because it was likely hungry. Otherwise it made great effort to completely avoid human contact. The only time it allowed itself to rest out in the open was towards the end, when Ripley was the only one left. It clearly didn't see her as a threat at all. This is actual intelligence at work here, both on a relatable human and animal level, and that's what made the alien truly frightening. It was afraid and it was smart enough to be afraid, and that's what made it seem real. It's what a real animal, person or horrible uncanny mixture in-between would have done.
Just something interesting to consider on this delightful Hallow's Eve.
Monsters, more often then not, are a variation or aberration of some kind of animal(s), or based on the concept of animals as we know them. Animals aren't invulnerable, and usually shy away from pain and injury. Seeing one charge soldiers while absorbing bullets isn't scary, it's silly, because this creature is obviously not what the story presented it as: a living thing. The need for self preservation is something we can relate to and something we can relate to most other living things. Taking that away leaves very little left to convince you that what you're looking at isn't CGI or a puppet.
A creature that stops, retreats, hides or otherwise avoids dangers demonstrates an intelligence and behavior that you would see in most things made of flesh. This can pull even the most elaborate and ridiculous creatures into an unsettling realm of believability, because it's doing something believable. An example of this demonstrated exquisitely would be two of the most iconic creatures in horror. The Thing (1982) and Alien are two movies quite famous for being far more unnerving and creepy then any of their later iterations or spin-offs. These two movies are most certainly the 'scary ones' of their respective series, and they accomplished this with much smaller budgets then other movies of the same name. It wasn't the actors, the mood or the practical effects that made the biggest difference (even though that all helped). It was the creatures themselves that made these movies frightening, and they did it by being frightened themselves.
The Alien and The Thing were scared through the majority of those movies, and if you don't believe that, go back and watch those movies again, right now. The Thing spends most it's time hiding in different forms. It picks the humans off one by one, but it does so seemingly more for it's own safety then any malicious purpose. When it does make itself known in front of a crowd, it's usually only when it's found out or about to be found out, then it gets injured or dies. The entirety of the movie is spent with this creature trying to build a spaceship in secret. You don't build a spaceship to go more populated areas and infect more people, you build a spaceship to go to space. This creature didn't want to conquer the world like the frightened people were saying, it wanted the fuck out of there.
The Alien immediately ran after it burst out of that poor fellow's chest, then spent the remainder of the movie hiding and growing in the shadows. Again, it picked off the people it killed one by one, and it did that because it was likely hungry. Otherwise it made great effort to completely avoid human contact. The only time it allowed itself to rest out in the open was towards the end, when Ripley was the only one left. It clearly didn't see her as a threat at all. This is actual intelligence at work here, both on a relatable human and animal level, and that's what made the alien truly frightening. It was afraid and it was smart enough to be afraid, and that's what made it seem real. It's what a real animal, person or horrible uncanny mixture in-between would have done.
Just something interesting to consider on this delightful Hallow's Eve.
Hey! Good to see a thing here :D I mean... not that Thing, but that would be cool too.
Happy Halloween. =)
There are some exceptions to the 'invulnerability ruins our suspension of disbelief' rule, though the only examples I can cite are from literature. I would point HP Lovecraft as an example- frequently the 'scary' part of his stories is the inevitability. That whatever it is, it is nothing like anything we know and it is unstoppable. It is a different kind of horror though.
Of course, written horror and movie horror can be vastly different.
Thanks for bringing it up, you made me think!
Happy Halloween!
Sadly I never pull the ideas off as well as I would like, I have never been good at world building, not as good as I would like to be. So I usually focus on the aesthetic side of character creation, which is the easy way out. This is why I am always so jealous of people who can truly think outside the box and write properly alien characters, I read "I have no mouth and I must scream" a few times a year just because of how properly stomach churning it is, how well the antagonistic super computer AM is portrayed, how the last remaining humans interpret his attitude and aggression towards them. I have never seen a good story told from the perspective of another race though, but I hardly get around literary circles much, curious if you or anyone has suggestions for that sort of thing.
The thing is still one of the best examples of good horror out there however, for all the reasons you mention and more, I rather love the idea put forth that the "thing" is merely trying to preserve itself. I have always loved that twist on things, the sudden realization that it goes both ways and those that are alien to us are just as shocked and frightened of us, perhaps even more so when you see how prone to violence and hate we as a species can be, when confronting the unknown. Still makes you wonder how contact with another sentient species would ever be possible for us, considering we cannot even stop killing each other for no good reason.
"I have no mouth and I must scream" Harlan Ellison 1967
http://pub.psi.cc/ihnmaims.txt
I mean the "Thing" had skinless dog creature with tentacle/whipping things whipping about! Or the part with the head running across the floor...amongst other scenes. I perceived it as most common folks- EEK ITS A MONSTER!!!
But then as I gotten older, re-watched the same movies...I was like...hell, those so called monsters were thinking of survival-
Aside from my dad's hobby of having me watch virtually every horror movie and un-kid friendly cartoon (Fritz!) those is one of the reasons why I draw/make monsters today, most of which for the very same reasons you mentioned.
And monsters are more fun to create anyways. Not just a 'GRRRRR-EAT-HUMANS' monster, but something that has a real 'feel' to it in terms of its nature. To me it what makes monster creating more fun imao. What make sense to *it* is totally alien to us, all the more terrifying. But at the end of the day... we are all alike in some way.
Still, to me the biggest monster of all time is mankind.
And the IRS >.>
The Thing has gone through many, many worlds just like our own and assimilated and destroyed many species like us. They do it because they can, not because they're scared. In Who Goes There, The Thing crashed its ship 20 or so million years ago on Earth, and was attempting to repair its ship and then possibly take over the planet. While it may have been "scared" during this time, it knew what it was doing and its ability to posses other creatures isn't there for nothing.
They're both a parasite, and they kill things. It's not fear that makes them hide, it's a hunting tactic. If they were trying to hide out of fear, they wouldn't come back out until the ship landed, then they could have easily escaped. In Alien, the first thing they find is an alien ship that had been destroyed by the Aliens. They were going to be used as a weapon, because they knew how vicious and cunning the Aliens were, and that's what the human company was trying to do, too.
I recently watched an extensive documentary about Halloween. John Carpenter hates the sequels that try to give Michael a story. He wanted The Shape to be an idea. A form. Not a person. That's [partly] why he wears a mask. Dr. Loomis says this in the movie multiple times; "I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil. " John said in an interview (paraphrasing here) "If you give him a story, you ruin the concept of Michael Myers."
That's the conclusion I've come to, anyway. The vision of the director resonated with me and I believe it to be true.
The idea of monsters just trying to survive may be true for some movie monsters, but those two I just don't agree that that's the case. Maybe Frankenstein's monster or the Wolfman, but not aliens that have "existed" for millions of years just to hunt and kill.
I realized that there may have been other intent with 'The Thing' if we are getting into expanded canon, but I am going by what the movie actually delivered. I don't know how canon the final product of that specific movie was, but I am glad it turned out the way it did. It seems all the best things in life are "happy accidents". Hearing Ridley Scott wanted to connect Xenomorphs with Christ recently makes me also wonder if the original Alien was supposed to be as good as it turned out. Regardless if Xenomorphs do get connected with Christ (eventually), the original movie still stands strong by itself for what it is, and people will still enjoy it for the reasons they originally did.
Second: When someone is telling a story, they have to work with what they've got. Cinematic story telling is a lot more expensive than text-based, for obvious reasons.
Third: There's actually been times throughout human history when the available weapons didn't work on what was attacking them (the story-tellers). Back in the Stone Age, it was (probably) creatures who had developed a hide thick enough to not care about the spears being thrown at them. In World War One, it was a frigging tank being opposed by men with rifles and horses. This stuff changes all the time, mind. The tool-users figured out how to crack the hide of the big scary thing that was dominating them. The Allies developed tech to combat the new technology on the battlefield. That doesn't make the initial stories any less frightening, but it does require some embellishment over time.
Do you think also however that the absence or seclusion of a monster is what can create the most fear from an audience?
It can seem like the creature is scared and hiding, but then I feel like having that sense of the unknown, of the creature being absent and unpredictable
and possibly always around the corner can be the scariest thing.
I mean, synx is damn scary when all you see is a face and then not knowing what the rest of the body is like or any other hidden ominous details...
We tend to share the same views but I never think to put it into words which makes me have a less understanding of my beliefs. Does that make sense?
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
Something that attacks you and runs away when you hit it can even be more effective in a survival horror sense... you know its there and it is still alive. But you have no idea where it went. With most games, you deal with it once and move on until you run into the next group. Kinda repetitive.
Anyway, although you've put a lot of thought into this, I have to disagree with you on a couple of major points. I'll start at the bottom and work upwards.
First, on "fear" in Alien. I think you're confusing fear with caution here. It's one thing to be afraid of something and another to be a cautious ambush predator that's capable of recognizing humans as a threat. Caution is almost required for any successful solo predatory animal, and avoiding contact really doesn't imply fear to me. I think the alien behaves as it's meant to behave: As a silent, nonhuman intelligence, stalking in the shadows like an animal, and taking humans as prey when it chooses.
The Thing is obviously intelligent, but whether it wants to escape or has some more sinister purpose, it wouldn't be a survivable lifeform if it didn't use its natural camouflage to remain hidden. Maybe I'm walking a fine line here, but I think it's a stretch to say that it's scared of humans rather than saying it's just intelligent and capable, and uses its abilities in the most effected manner to avoid being killed. I think caution and fear are two different things.
Now, there are a few points I agree with you on. Making the monster act in an intelligent manner absolutely makes it much more frightening, and adds verisimilitude to the movie. That being said, I think it's honestly at least as much in how they make the creature actual move in the scenes where it appears as it has to do with how they make it behave, although both are important. Obviously, no matter how smart they make it, if the effects look like crap, it immediately breaks verisimilitude. Really, it needs to look real, move realistically, and think in a reasonable manner to succeed. I don't think one of those things is more important than the other two.
Lastly, we both agree that something shrugging off loads of bullets isn't particularly scary. I think it's mainly because at that point you are no longer in a horror movie. Any movie, with maybe a few exceptions, where you have well armed protagonists going face to face with enemies and spraying them with bullets is probably very comfortably inside of the action genre, and not really supposed to be scary.
Ineffective weaponry is a staple of good horror. Having a protagonist search for some method of killing or wounding the attacker only to have it be of limited or negligible effectiveness highlights the unequal power between monster and victim, and, I'll agree, it can be done in such a way that it makes the audience cringe because it's lame instead of scary, it can also be done very well. Something that makes bears and warthogs scary in real life is that wounding them will often do very little as far as stopping them or forcing them to retreat is concerned, so it's not really unrealistic to have animals shrug off wounds either.
Anyway, I enjoyed reading your thoughts on this subject, although in this case I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with the majority of your conclusions.
I think fear requires something more than just being careful, but maybe it's just semantics. Here's a good example though: A tiger stalking a peccary isn't being cautious because its afraid of the peccary, but because it's the most successful method of hunting peccaries. The peccary cannot realistically injure the tiger in any way.
It's maybe semantic. In the alien's case, though, it's not afraid of the humans. If it's afraid of anything, it's afraid of not successfully capturing one, or else afraid of being shot, to the extent you can characterize those as a type of fear.
The problem with saying all caution is fear is that you then say fear is a normal state for everything that isn't reckless and/or stupid. I don't know that I'd really want to admit to that. Or worse yet, anyone who considers likely outcomes is afraid. I think that's really a stretch, and even if you could technically characterize things that way, it isn't really a definition of fear that matches a commonsense understanding of the word.
Even if I agreed that caution and fear were the same thing, your premise was that the creatures were afraid of the humans, but "humans" wasn't an outcome they were trying to avoid. They clearly weren't afraid of the humans themselves.
The other thing is just that I am really uncomfortable characterizing caution as fear, and I thought of a better example.
If I succeed in hunting my prey 90% of the time when I attack from ambush, and always avoid injury this way, and only succeed 50% of the time and am sometimes injured when I attack my prey directly, it really seems that I'm not motivated by fear to attack from ambush, it's just that it's a quantitatively more efficient method of hunting, all else being equal.
I think fear requires some kind of overcorrection to a bad result, not a reasonable response to a bad result. I wear a face shield when I weld because I don't want to go blind, and I will if I don't, not because I'm afraid of going blind.
If the crew had never found the suspicious remnants from the norwegian station, they might not have figured out there was a parasite infestation. The alien was never violent unless it was cornered and confronted.
Alien, however, was a much more vicious predator. It had great biomechanical camouflage, which means that it does hide and does not want to be found, but uses it more as a stalking method than a preservation method.
Alien is definitely among my favorite, if not my most favorite movies. Sci-fi aside it taps into that primal part of you that remembers why fear is vital to survival. Back when humanity was just some hominid sleeping in the trees, we were afraid of the night because back then, the things in the dark were real. They would creep in, pick off the easiest, most vulnerable, and eat. It was about survival. Survival is brutal, and it is terribly sobering.
I miss horror flicks based on that most instinctively basic and gruesome premise.