Terror, horror, and the gross-out

I like being scared. Not disgusted; you don't make something scary by adding fake blood. Like I told my wife, creepy is good, but gory isn't.

A long time ago, Stephen King wrote, "Always try to terrify. If you can't terrify, then horrify. If you can't horrify, go for the gross-out." The last one is obviously different, but for years I didn't know the difference between terror and horror.

I think the first thirty minutes of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining are some of the most terrifying ever filmed, and nothing scary happens. The atmosphere is just so oppressive that my nerves just get wound tighter and tighter in expectation. The fact that it stars Jack Nicholson at his creepiest doesn't help make it a ray of sunshine either.

The same movie has a good example of horror as well. When the woman in the tub turns out to be an old woman's bloated corpse, the very idea is horrible. It's something that we never wanted to see, and never want to eye again. It's repulsive, and that repulsion is the difference between terror and horror; terror is fear of something unknown, while horror is fear of something known.

What most things have degenerated into, unfortunately, is just gross. Too much of modern "horror" is just fake blood and guts, which derives directly from the slasher movies of the 1980s and indirectly from The Shining's corridors of blood. What few directors seem to learn, though, is that a drop of blood can be more effective than a corridor of it, and when it comes to gore, less is usually more.

At least that's my opinion.