This is a question that I used to ask myself a lot, however, that was then and the answer is now. What is horror? Horror; rather, true horror is something that makes you feel the cool chill of death reverberate through your body. True Horror is something that offends you in such a way that you find it utterly scary, repulsive, terrifying, and demented.
True horror is the sound that wakes you up at night and makes you wonder what it was. It is the intermix of shadows in the corner of your bedroom that linger on well after you have fallen asleep. True horror is the pain you don’t want to feel or the emotion that we don’t want to understand or to have or to hold onto for fear of what it will make us become.
It is the feeling that we get when we are alone in our own house that sends chills up are spine. It is the sudden lack luster of emotions that we get when looking into the dark rooms of our house, wondering what might be looking back at us, inches from us, preparing to strike us down as we turn away. It is the visions that pass by your eyes as you reach for the light switch, the terror of the heart that pumps in envious vain, the thought that terrify us down to the core of our own mortal existence. This is what true horror is.
Whenever we read a horror novel or see what has been said to be a horror movie the subject in question should create not a sense of thrill or a sense of a quick scare or a quick jump from the chair or theater seat followed by the onslaught of laughter, but it should make us feel a terror that continues on well past the time that we either stopped reading it or watching it. It should linger on with us like the smell of rotting flesh, the taste of decay, the vision of death; almost becoming a part of out own being, our own thoughts and mind. It should move us, perplex us, and at the very least cause such a feeling in us that we want or desire to know more about this feeling or this fear within us.
True Horror is meant to offend. If you watch or read something that is stated as a horror and it does not cause the feeling of being offensive to you then it is not a true horror but a copycat-like thriller playing itself out for the quick scare. A creation by the ignorance of Hollywood looking for a quick buck. If it does not offend you is it really worth watching or reading?? if it does not cause you to think or ponder upon, was it really worth the effort? Was it really worth your time? To me, it is quite a simplistic answer to these questions but what is it to you?
Filed under: Horror, genre | Tagged: Books, death, decay, fear, genre, Horror, scare
