Horror of Horrors

Horror is a strange genre.

Authors often take the most prosaic situations and turn them into our worst nightmares, or take our worst nightmares and make them even worse.

In my opinion, Stephen King is the all-time master of horror. He takes man’s best friend and turns him into our worst enemy (Cujo). He takes a low dose of cabin fever during a long winter and turns it into a full blown psychosis (The Shining). In his hands, everyday objects like cell phones can turn us into zombies (Cell). Many children are naturally terrified of clowns, so it would be only natural for King to turn It into terror. And every author’s worst nightmare is an obsessive fan (Misery).

As if I had a fan to become obsessive.

King does what horror does best, taking the familiar and twisting it into something both recognizable and terrifying. By doing so he draws us into his stories in a way that more abstract or distant subjects like Transylvanian vampires (Dracula) cannot. Of course, Dracula preys on us at that moment between sleep and wakefulness when we feel the incubus standing on our chest, gnawing at our soul.

I’m not sure where Stephenie Meyer’s modern obsession with vampires and werewolves fits. The characters seem so commonplace, like those weird misfits that populate the edges of every high school. Mostly we choose to ignore them, but she attributes a sort of benign evil, like a mental illness that’s being successfully treated with medication.

As long as they keep taking their pills.

Movie horror has mostly descended into gore. All the prevailing characters: Chucky, Freddy Krueger and their kin are simply excuses to paint the screen red and display flashes of disembodied body parts. I suppose teenage girls love to scream out their squeamishness while boys dream of extending their fantasies beyond pulling the wings off bugs.

Playing football isn’t enough, anymore. Now we have Resident Evil 14, or whatever the current version is. If kids can create their own bloodbaths, what do they need books for?

Imagination can only atrophy.