Posts Tagged ‘Gerald’s Game’

Antagonist Level of Threat in Horror Stories

Posted: November 22, 2020 in Reflections, Scary Stuff, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
2
Tell me, where would you put Godzilla in this classification system?

For a while now, I’ve been thinking of the different kinds of antagonists in horror stories. Not divided by type, but by level of threat. What do I mean by this? I mean, aren’t all antagonists in horror stories a threat? I mean, it is horror!

Well, yes. But how big that threat is can vary from story to story, and can even influence what kind of tropes and stakes we can expect in the stories. To further illustrate this, let me categorize the level of threats using Starbucks sizes: Tall, Grande, and Venti. Yes, I know they have a Short size and a Trenta size, but I don’t know anyone who uses them. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the cups for those sizes.

Also, Starbucks, please don’t sue me. I’m just using your sizes to help illustrate a point.

Getting sidetracked. Let’s start talking about the levels of threat, starting from biggest to smallest.

Venti: While all horror antagonists are a threat to the protagonist(s), the Venti-level threats are usually threats to many or all people. Cosmic entities like Cthulhu or the Devil in stories taking place during the Apocalypse usually rank this high. They’re a threat to all life or to all we hold dear, and the suffering they could induce if they succeed would be terrible.

This level can also apply to threats like Pennywise, aka IT. While he’s restricted to the town of Derry, Maine, he’s responsible for countless deaths since the 17th century. Even when he’s not active, his influence over the town of Derry is such that he controls it at all times, causes all sorts of horrors while sleeping. IT is Derry. Thank goodness his children didn’t get anywhere, am I right?

Bughuul from Sinister is a great example of a Grande-level villain

Grande: An antagonist of this size may be a threat to many people, but they’re not as all powerful or have such sweeping implications as a Venti-level threat. Still, you wouldn’t want to cross one of these guys if you ended up in their stories.

An example of a Grande-level threat would be Leland Gaunt from Needful Things. A demonic figure who looks at things from a business-like perspective, any town he comes to faces annihilation once he sets up shop. Half of Castle Rock either ended up dead or blown up because of him, after all.

Another example might be Bughuul from the movie Sinister, a Babylonian deity that eats children. Throughout the centuries, he’s manipulated children into killing their families so he could eat their souls. Anywhere he goes, you can expect blood and death to follow. He’s definitely no small potatoes, though he doesn’t warrant the same level of panic as a Venti-level threat might.

Tall: While they may be the on the lowest level of horror antagonist, that doesn’t mean you should relax. In fact, these villains tend to be much more personal than the likes of Bughuul or Cthulhu.

Tall-level villains may only be a threat to the protagonist and a few others, but they bring with them the power to destroy everything the protagonist holds dear. Demons seeking to possess a soul, vengeful ghosts, stalkers and serial killers focused on one particular victim, cursed objects, etc. They may not be seeking to end the world or blow up a town, but they will destroy the protagonist’s happiness and sanity for their own goals.

I would even include the Overlook Hotel in this category. It may be powerful and evil, but it’s only able to be so in the presence of someone with the shining, and then it only seeks to add the shining to its own power so it can be active more often. In the novel’s case, it breaks down Jack and terrorizes Danny to make them more vulnerable and ultimately to possess the former and kill the latter.

Like I said, what they’re missing in power or scope of threat, they make up for in how personal they are.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a way to classify the threat level of horror villains.

Where does Jason fit on this scale? It’s not easy to tell.

That being said, it’s not perfect. What villains belong where is entirely dependent on who’s doing the categorizing. Is a slasher villain like Jason Voorhees a Grande because he has a particular hunting area and has killed many over the decades? Or is he a Tall because he’s only a threat if you step into his territory? And this doesn’t even cover stories like Gerald’s Game, where there is no antagonist but a pair of handcuffs and the protagonist’s own psyche. Even the Space Cowboy who visits her doesn’t really threaten her. He’s more of a reflection of her own terrors who turns out to be a real person than anything else.

So why do I write all this, if it’s not a flawed system? I do it because it’s not to categorize the villains themselves, but the stories they belong to. A story with a Tall villain is much more character-focused and can often lean into the character’s mindset. A story with a Venti-sized villain often requires the story to encompass a huge cast, lots of locations, and putting an entire population at risk. A Grande may straddle the line of the other categories, while also having varying kill counts depending on what the story requires.

In a way, The Starbucks Levels of Antagonism (copyright pending), are like the Bechdel or Mako Mori tests: exercises to examine stories, the decisions made while creating them, and how you can learn from them. And given the nature of fiction writing, as well as how difficult it is to categorize fiction like a scientific system, that’s probably for the best.

Thanks for giving me a chance to air some thoughts, Followers of Fear. I’m off to figure out where on this system I belong. Until next time, pleasant nightmares!

Can Flashbacks Be Scary?

Posted: April 11, 2018 in Progress Report, Reflections, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
4

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this, but Rose has a lot of flashback sequences and other dips into the past within the story, especially in the last two-thirds. I did this for a number of reasons: exploring the characters’s pasts; making them more complex; and just an opportunity to write some sequences to add to the horror element of the story. And there are a lot of horrifying things in those sequences, things that I can’t go into without revealing too many plot details, but they did make my beta readers gasp and stare at the page wide-eyed. They were horrifying moments in the story.

Not to mention, I think that flashbacks can be scary if done right. A good example of this is Gerald’s Game by Stephen King: while the protagonist’s current situation is scary enough, going into her past midway through the story and seeing how her father abused her as a kid was horrifying in its own right. Another good example would be the movie Oculus: that film flashes between the present and the past throughout its runtime, and it’s freaky no matter what year it is (see my Rewatch Review of that film).

Well, it looks like I didn’t do the flashbacks right for Rose. In the notes on the fourth draft from my publisher, they mentioned that all those flashbacks are just bad stuff happening to those characters, and while that stuff is horrifying, it’s not scary. I’ve had a lot of back and forth with them on this, and after a lot of thought, I can see where they’re coming from. After all, while in the real world “horrifying” can be a synonym for “scary,” especially in relation to current events, in fiction that’s not necessarily the case. Think about it this way: Harry Potter is horribly mistreated by his relatives, and what he goes through is horrifying. But if you ask any normal Potterhead what person or creature from the books they would be scared to face, the Dursleys wouldn’t rate very high on that list. The dementors, Voldemort and his Death Eaters, or the basilisk, sure. But the Dursleys? Considering most Potterheads are Muggle in biology and can’t perform magic, anyone who had to face them would probably be invited into Privet Drive and served tea and cookies in front of the TV!

So while showing how many terrible things happened in the characters’ pasts may be horrifying, it might not be scary. And considering how much experience my publisher has and how well-received their books are (have you checked out The Cronian Incident by Matthew Williams yet?), I’m taking this piece of feedback to heart.

I won’t lie, though, I’m a little disappointed, and I’ve been wondering where I went wrong. Or maybe to phrase it better, I’m wondering how I might have done the flashbacks better.

Well, in the case of Gerald’s Game, whose flashback is most similar to mine, they only do one big flashback sequence, not several. That way, it doesn’t become a repetitive cliche or trick. That, and its connection with the current events of the story: the protagonist’s abuse by her father is very much connected to her current predicament, on psychological and symbolic levels as well as literal levels. And with Oculus, the horror behind the story–a cursed/haunted mirror–is scary no matter when it happens. Spinning a tale of two siblings who experience the mirror both as children and adults, and then going back and forth between those two experiences, makes for some great psychological/supernatural horror.

And maybe that’s the thing: connection. In both those examples, the flashbacks, no matter how they’re staged, have very strong connections to what’s happening in the story’s present. Of the ones in Rose, while they do have connections to the characters’ pasts, only one of them has a direct correlation to the current events of the story. And that one’s told to us by the antagonist rather than shown in flashback. And that’s why the flashbacks in this story didn’t work as well as they could have.

So what’s next? Since so much of the novel is in flashback, I may have to do a whole lot more revising. Hell, I may even have to rewrite a good chunk of the novel. Which isn’t something I’m unfamiliar with: as many of you may recall, I had to go back and start over on the first draft back in college because the first attempt went in a direction that didn’t help the story.

Still, it’s a little annoying, and I haven’t figured out exactly what I’m going to do for these changes (though I have ideas). Hopefully, whatever I come up with, it’ll come out for the novel’s betterment, and bring it one step closer to publication.

Fingers crossed.

Review: 1922 (2017 film)

Posted: October 20, 2017 in Review, Scary Stuff
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

I did not expect to do a review today. I didn’t even expect to see a new movie this weekend! But then I found out that the fourth or fifth Stephen King film to come out this year (he really is in the middle of an adaptation renaissance) was out on Netflix, I was like, “I gotta watch this. I gotta watch this, and I gotta review it.” So I watched 1922. And what did I think?

Well, it was nothing like I expected. I’ll give it that much.

1922 follows a farmer who plots with his son to murder his wife after she threatens to force them to leave their farm and move to the city, and the consequences of their plans. It’s based on a novella that I’ve only read half of (I was just coming off a huge Stephen King binge, and at the end of those, I just get sick of his style), and I honestly didn’t know it was being adapted into a movie until I saw the trailer last month. I wasn’t too excited, because while the trailer was good, I felt a lot more hype for movies like It and Gerald’s Game. Who knows? Maybe it would blow me away.

Too bad I found it average.

I think the film’s biggest problem is its first half hour, in which the farmer and his son kill the wife (spoilers). They cram that whole thing into about twenty minutes or half hour, from the introduction to the main characters to the murder. Now, usually movies about murdering someone take more time to do that, introduce the characters and then get to the murder. This gives the filmmakers time to introduce us to the characters so that we, the audience, can connect and empathize with them. This time is also used to explain why the characters feel murder is necessary to accomplish their goals. Otherwise the audience won’t understand, and that takes them out of the story.

However, 1922‘s filmmakers are in such a rush to get to the actual murder, they skip over all that. Instead, they use narration and jumpy shots of the characters thinking or pacing or staring into space to try to get all that across, and it’s done poorly. There’s a phrase we writers use: “show, don’t tell,” and that applies to movies too. We only get so much interaction between the characters during this time, in favor of the jumpy shots and narration, and by the time we get to the commitment to murder, we’re just like, “Wait, I have a hundred questions and points I’d like to bring up! I seriously don’t get why this murder needs to happen!”

After that first half hour though, the film does even out, becoming a much better horror film. The pacing becomes much more even, and they dispose of the jumpy shots. It actually makes for a really well-plotted thriller, in which we really see how this murder, as well as some of the consequences–expected and otherwise–psychologically damage the farmer and his son. The actors do a good job of making their characters seem real, and the use of the supernatural in this film isn’t too over-the-top or distracting. It’s actually pretty creepy at times.

Still, there’s nothing during the time after the first half hour of the film that makes the film extraordinary. No terrifying corn chase scene, no stalking of the main characters that makes you feel a chill. It’s just average psychological thrills and family drama, and we’ve seen a lot of it before in a hundred films, books, and TV shows.

Still, it’s better than the first half hour.

On a scale of 1 to 5, I give the film 1922 a 2.5. It’s a horror film, but there’s better material out there, Stephen King or otherwise. Go watch that instead.

 

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’ll try to make the next blog post I put out either something about my life or about examining something in writing or horror that’s worthy of discussion. Until then, have some pleasant nightmares and a great weekend.

Review: Gerald’s Game (2017 film)

Posted: September 29, 2017 in Review, Scary Stuff
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
4

I read the novel Gerald’s Game earlier this year just in preparation for this movie. I heard what it was about (see my summary below), and I was like, “Shit, I gotta read this.” And I did, and I found it really intense. It was filled with some of the usual Stephen King cliches, those quirky sentences and weird things he likes to do, but my God, it was intense. Nothing I couldn’t handle, but still very intense. I could understand why my mother found it so difficult to read she had to skip to the end just so she could sleep at night.

This evening, after a long training trip for work and after hearing that this Netflix Original was really good according to early reviews, I sat down in my hotel room to watch the film. And I can say without hesitation, this was an amazing psychological thriller, scarier than It, even. And unlike It, I would not recommend my mother see this one.

Gerald’s Game follows Jessie Burlingame, a housewife played by a convincing Carla Gugino, who goes with her husband Gerald, played by Bruce Greenwood, to their lakeside cabin for a weekend away. However when a kinky sex game goes wrong, leaving Gerald dead and Jessie handcuffed to the bed, struggling to survive as the stress causes her mind to unwind and her worst nightmares to come to life.

So like I said, this film is great, with Conjuring-level frights at certain points. The filmmakers used camera angles, light, colors, and especially sound to highlight the horror of the situation. The sound is noteworthy, because it’s used so sparingly once the movie really gets started. After Gerald dies, Jesse starts screaming, and there’s background music, but the shot changes to outside, and all we hear is birdsong and some muffled screaming. This highlights all the more how this could actually happen in the real world. It’s beautiful.

I also like some of the changes made from book to movie. The writers and directors managed to translate what some might correctly term as an unfilmable story very well to the screen by changing some of the weirder elements of the story, namely all the voices in Jessie’s head brought out by the stress with their own distinctive personalities, into just three personalities: a more ballsy version of herself, Gerald, and her father. They also switched from having Jessie being in nothing but panties to wearing a slip, saving this film from being just titillating torture porn. And they actually manage to get in some slightly funny moments to make sure the story doesn’t get too dark (or maybe I’m laughing at weird stuff to relieve myself of tension).

But the best part is definitely the climax. My God, did that scene make me cringe! That could not have been easy to film (on so many levels), but it pays off so well. I actually cringed in my seat and let out exclamations of disgust and horror after seeing that scene.

There were only a few things I didn’t care for. In one scene, Jessie’s narrating a dream she had at one point as a child, and I feel like that would’ve been better shown than told (I sound like a high school English class typing that, but I don’t care, it’s true). There’s also a lot of dialogue in the film that, while it would fit in a King novel, never would fit in real life, let alone in a movie. And while the way the story is wrapped up kind of works in the novel, I feel like it might’ve been done better if it was done differently in the movie. It’s not bad, it’s actually decent, but it could’ve been done differently and possibly much better.

Also, that ending forgot about the dog. Just saying.

All in all though, this is a fantastic movie, a psychological thriller that scares, grosses out, and even manages to integrate themes of misogyny and the effects of sexual abuse into the story without feeling forced. Heck, it’s even got some dark humor at times…if you see it as humor. I could honestly see this film getting some academic examinations in the future just based on how well it’s done. It’s that good a film.

On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m giving Gerald’s Game a well-deserved 4.7 out of 5. Unless you’re my mother, go to Netflix, eat some popcorn, and go to bed with your arms close to your chest because you’re afraid you’ll wake up with your arms cuffed to the bedposts. I know I will, especially that last part.

Goodnight Followers of Fear, and pleasant nightmares!