What's Your Favorite Scare?

When you're done here, go visit me at Yolanda Renee's blog, Defending the Pen. I'm giving away a free copy of The Deep Dark Woods, an anthology that includes my short story, The Blue Mist, to one lucky commenter.

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You know that line from Scream? What's your favorite scary movie? While I'd love to hear that, too, I want to know what your favorite scare is more.

Do you like jump scares? This seems to be the focus of recent horror movies. It does manage to make a person tense when they spend the movie waiting for the jump scare, knowing it's coming. But is that a real scare?

Do you prefer the psychological buildup, where the truth slowly ekes into your brain, building your horror as it registers? No. No, they wouldn't do that. They couldn't do that. Please?

Or are you into torture, pain, blood-letting? Personally, this is my least favorite type of scare.

Does your favorite scare involve monsters? Isolation? The monster within? Do creepy crawlies do it for you every time? Have you ever considered what it is about your favorite scary movie that reaches you deep down?

I did a bit of a mini-workshop (not even that) at a Maker Faire this weekend. My hour was "Ask me how to make anything creepy." In preparation for it, I sat down to analyze what it is that scares people. Sure, clowns, spiders, and slashers scare people, but why? What is it about these different elements that scare people? We may be afraid that something is under our bed, but we all know there isn't really anything under there. So what makes us pull our feet in under the covers.

I broke it down into some basic elements. What is it we actually fear, beyond the surface scares we come up with?

Vulnerability/helplessness/violation of sanctity - No one likes to feel vulnerable, yet horror movies show us when we're most open to attack. They remind us that we're never safe anywhere, not even in the places we feel safest. In the shower (Psycho), in childhood (Poltergeist), when we're sleeping (Nightmare on Elm Street.) The thought of someone in our home, something under the bed or in the closet, is embedded deep within our psyches, because once our home is violated, where else can we go for safety?

Isolation/being trapped/claustrophobia - Something else people fear, even those who love their alone time, is true loneliness and isolation. In space, no one can hear you scream, right? Right. Being trapped on a space ship (Alien) or a ship (Ghost Ship) means there's nowhere to run. And no one is coming to save you any time soon. But you can still be on land and be isolated, such as in a deep, dark cave (The Descent).

Slightly askew/dissonance/humanoid - Our brains have been trained to notice things that are slightly off balance. Even when our conscious mind doesn't notice, our subconscious does. And notice that most of our classic monsters are based on things that are similar to humans or used to be mortal? Vampires (Dracula), werewolves (Silver Bullet), zombies (Night of the Living Dead), even clowns (IT). All of these are one step away from normal people. We fear that which is different, but we especially fear that which is different, yet reflects some element of ourselves back at us. It reminds us of our own mortality, the monsters within ourselves. And it lets us know how close our neighbor or our own selves are to becoming something Other. Even worse is when it is truly human, but there is something that sets it apart (Silence of the Lambs, Halloween). What sets you apart from them? How thin is that line?

The unknown/loss or lack of control - A fear of the dark is really a primitive fear of the unknown that hides away where we can't see it. The thought that something could be right in front of us, yet we can't see it. Something sneaking up on us. This one takes us right back to the caveman days, where the dark held many things that could kill us. Predators that waited until night to find their prey.

Creepy crawlies/nature gone wrong/forces of nature - This one is another primitive fear, born of days in the caves. Snakes and spiders, cockroaches and rats. Each of these things can get into the tiniest cracks, sneak up on us outside or inside. Then they can disappear without a trace (Arachnaphobia), leaving behind the hope that someone can find evidence that it was a spider bite. Or there are the big creatures, the scary things that are just too strong for us (Anaconda, Tremors, Lake Placid, Jaws). Nature is a scary beast. And something we have no choice but to contend with.

Change/science - People fear change, the lack of comfort and the things they know. Yet we deal with change all the time. Stories that deal with this show us dire change (I Am Legend). When it involves science, it shows us that the world can be graphically changed by our own hands. An escaped virus (28 Days Later), artificial intelligence that wants to see us wiped out (Terminator), a mad scientist (Re-Animator).

Pain/torture - The ultimate copout in horror, BUT something that definitely works to reach people. No one likes pain. (Okay not totally true, but most of us don't). We do what we can to avoid pain on a daily basis. The thought of being subjected to intense levels of pain and torture is terrifying (Saw, Hostel).

Of course, most horror depends upon a combination of these elements. I could have moved the movies I mentioned around all over the place, put them in different categories. No horror story depends solely on one type of scare. There needs to be an assault on our psyches to really freak us out.

So. What is your favorite scare? And your favorite scary movie? What tickles your psyche and scares the living daylights out of you? Why? What other categories do you think there are?

May you find your Muse.