A Scary Thought

Recently I saw a film called The Woman in Black. My opinions of it aside, I was intrigued by people who seemed to think that it was some sort of throwback to the days when horror was about more than gore and violence and loud noises intended to cause the audience to jump. It’s true, the gore and violence might not have been there, but the gore is a much less important issue, in my view, then the ever pervasive “jump-scare”.

The Jump-scare was exercised throughout the woman in black, and it completely ruined any chance the film had at creating a psychological and gripping atmosphere. As an example of this, I’d like to turn to the gaming world, and one of the finest pieces of art it has ever produced: The Silent Hill series. More specifically, Silent Hills 2 and 3.

 What Silent Hill does, better than any other game/film/book etc. that I have ever experienced is create a thick, inescapable atmosphere, which I’ll get to in a moment, but the key thing is that Silent Hill is almost scarier when the monsters aren’t there than when they are. How does it manage this?

Turning back to The Woman in Black, the scare formula that it sticks to like glue is suspense, then jump-scare, then downtime, repeat. There are two inherent problems with this. Firstly, the jump-scare is cathartic. When the flashing image pops up supported by a loud instrumental flourish, and your brain’s defence mechanisms create a sudden rush of adrenaline and causes you to jump, the tension completely evaporates. This should be avoided. If you want to scare your audience, what you need to do is keep the tension utterly palpable, so thick you could cut it with a goddamn chainsaw.

 Let’s break it down into stages. Stage one: The main character is in a state of tension, usually through a fear of danger. Two: The character notices a monster, and begins preparing to deal with the encounter, either through combat or fleeing. Three: The character fights the threat or flees from it. Now, what I think is the crux of the matter is that a lot of modern horror films leave out step two and put too much emphasis on step three. We go strait from a state of tension to a state of alertness. It’s a very jarring experience, that’s why we jump, because step 3 comes out of nowhere. This is what happens in The Woman in Black.

Now, let’s contrast that with Silent Hill. In the beginning of Silent Hill 2, it takes about half an hour of gameplay before you see the first monster. During this time, the game creates a thick, engulfing, almost oppressive atmosphere. This is an atmosphere that survives and thrives precisely because the threat of danger is always there. It’s not the danger its self that causes us to be afraid, it’s the threat of it. Silent Hill realises this, and you can spend long sections of the game without seeing a monster. The effects of these sections are twofold. Firstly, the thought in the back of your mind that you might be attacked at any moment is allowed time to really be planted and gradually develop and ferment in your mind. And two, it creates a crushing feeling of loneliness, which isn’t of particular note in this blog but it’s use in the games is very effective. What we are more interested in is the first effect.

Everything in Silent Hill is gradual. The small seed planted in your mind gradually becomes a constant thought, you can’t turn a corner without being terrified of the possibility of what’s behind it, you can’t open a door without taking a breath, steadying yourself for what’s might lurk behind it. That, ladies and gentlemen… is fear. That is horror. We’ll call this particular effect the tension effect.

And when you are eventually confronted with a monster, the game holds it’s tension brilliantly. The transition from stage one to stage two is also gradual. When a monster is close, your radio slowly crackles into life, the now iconic sound of static hitting your ears, the static eventually establishing its self as the most dreaded sound in the game. Because so much of the game is in darkness, you also almost always hear the monster before you see it. It’s important to remember when it comes to this process that it’s the opposite of what you might traditionally think. Stage three is the least important phase, it’s stage one that should be focused on, it’s stage one that achieves the tension effect, not stage 3.

Now admittedly, Silent Hill is a game, and The Woman in Black is a film. I think Horror comes more naturally to a game than a film, because gaming is naturally more immersive, being interactive vs. a non interactive medium such as film. However, the lessons we can learn from Silent Hill can be extrapolated. If we want films that generally scare us, as opposed to just disgusting us with gore or making us jump, then we need to go back to basics and take a good hard look at the horror formula, and I think we can look at things like Silent Hill and say “what did they get right, what is it about this that scares us, and how can we learn from it”. If not, then the bland wasteland that is modern horror may endure for sometime. And that is indeed a very, very scary thought.

The Woman in Black Review

The Woman in Black Review

Summery
Daniel Radcliffe’s committed but inadequate central performance doesn’t do this repetitive, formulaic jump-scare filled film any favours.

Full Review
I, like many others, only really took an interest in The Woman in Black to examine how it’s leading actor, Daniel Radcliffe would perform outside his Potter comfort zone. To cut a long story short, Radcliffe neither shines nor fails, managing to give a performance containing the bare minimum needed for a pass, and nothing more. He looks scared, that’s about it. There is a scene near the beginning when his character, Arthur Kipps is looking in the mirror, thinking about his late wife that is about as good as Radcliffe’s performance gets, featuring one shot of pretty good emoting, but that’s the high point, and it’s not really high enough.

Now, with Radcliffe aside, we can get on with the film…

The cinema loving purist in me is finding it quite difficult to negatively review TWiB, despite the fact that I didn’t really like it all that much. Ultimately it’s a horror film that actually tries to be a horror film, it tries to create suspense, chills and genuine atmosphere, and it doesn’t do the worst conceivable job, and, for that, it is to be commended, in the modern era of films being called horrors just because they’re filled to the brim with gore, it is a refreshing and welcome effort to actually try and get in the head of the viewer and create some genuine creeping fear.

 I’d like very much to be able to say that it did it’s job to the full and that it will no doubt issue in a new era of psychological horrors, but, I must be honest. So, to that end: The Woman in Black, for all it’s integrity and it’s heart being in the right place, simply isn’t that good.

Daniel Radcliffe simply isn’t a good enough actor to carry a film, and this is a film that demanded a very strong central performance, given how much focus is centred on it’s main character. And for all it’s desire to create a psychological, atmospheric chill-fest, it’s still far too reliant on “jump-scares”, the scares becoming monotonous and formulaic. Horror 101: If you wish to snare your audience with a dense, atmospheric… atmosphere, then having a script that is repetitive to the point that you’re wondering whether or not the screenwriter is genuinely amnesic can be very counterproductive to the desired outcome. It isn’t long before you work out that the basic formula is tension-jump scare-downtime, repeat for about 90 minutes with intermittent and ultimately uninteresting plot elements thrown in every now and then in a vain and asinine attempt to add some direly needed freshness to the film. For what it’s worth, yes, I did jump throughout the film, if you want to call that horror then by all means be my guest, but the fact is, you can call a tomato a vegetable as much as you want, repeating it over and over again won’t make it anymore true, and repeating the same jump scare formula over and over again doesn’t make it any more scary.

Should I See It ?
If you just want some cheap scares, then give it a watch. Everyone else, move along, nothing to see here.


Overall Score: 52/100 (E Grade)

The 1st Annual BWAP Awards

Best Film

• Hugo
• The Ides of March
• Drive
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
• We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Director

• Martin Scorsese - Hugo
• Tomas Alfredson - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
• Woody Allen - Midnight in Paris
• Terrence Malick - The Tree of Life
• Lynne Ramsey - We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Actor

• Gary Oldman - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
• Ryan Gosling - The Ides of March/Drive
• Asa Butterfield - Hugo
• Brad Pitt - The Tree of Life
• Owen Wilson - Midnight in Paris

Best Actress

• Rooney Mara - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• Tilda Swinton - We Need to Talk About Kevin
• Kirsten Dunst - Melancholia 
• Meryl Streep - The Iron Lady
• Kristen Wiig - Bridesmaids

Best Supporting Actor

• Kenneth Branagh - My Week with Marilyn
• Phillip Seymour-Hoffman - The Ides of March
• Benedict Cumberbatch - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
• Ben Kingsley - Hugo
• Albert Brooks - Drive

Best Supporting Actress

• Carey Mulligan - Drive
• Evan Rachel-Wood - The Ides of March
• Marion Cotillard - Midnight in Paris
• Chloe-Grace Moretz - Hugo
• Charlotte Gainsbourg - Melancholia

Best Original Screenplay

• Woody Allen - Midnight in Paris
• Kristen Wiig - Bridesmaids
• Lars Von Trier - Melancholia

Best Adapted Screenplay

• George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon - The Ides of March
• Bridget O’ Conner and Peter Straughn - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
• Lynne Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear - We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Visuals

• Hugo
• The Tree of Life
• Drive

Best Audio

• Drive
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
• Hugo

Best Ensemble

• The Ides of March
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
• Bridesmaids
• We Need to Talk About Kevin
• Hugo