Saricks, Brendan J.

The Horror of Horror

This is a topic near and dear to my heart. Horror has ever been, and will continue to be, my favorite member of the genre pantheon, and I’m tired of seeing its definition and flavor watered down and applied to everything. Let me help you see the truth.

It seems to me that horror has been distilled to mean anything scary, from aliens to ax-murderers. This is incorrect. “Scary” is almost completely subjective. There are people out there terrified of cats (I know, weird right?), but I have a cat sitting right here next to me, and I do not live in a house of horrors.

Well, not for that reason anyway.

Horror does not equal scary. Horror IS scary, but it isn’t the embodiment of the word. Horror is bigger than scary. Horror is scary without explanation. But hold on, we are getting ahead of ourselves here.

The Ax-Murderer movie confuses me the most. I think this comes from the idea that an ax-murderer is horrible which, I admit, is awfully close to horror, but just because the root is the same doesn’t mean that the word means the same thing. Horticulture also shares the same root, but I don’t know how scary gardening is.

No wait, I take that back, I do.

Your ax-muderer isn’t a horror flick, it’s a thriller. The evil is a real, tangible thing and his motivations are real world motivations. A vengeful asshole with an ax isn’t horror, its just scary. Thrillers, however, are not the big villain here. There is a sub-genre that is mislabeled as horror more than any other.

Science-Fucking-Fiction

I love Sci-Fi, love it, but it causes me more horror-based heartbreak than any other genre (yes, I realize how ridiculous that statement is.) Without taking 20 minutes to show you every single wound this has caused me, let me save us some time and break it down quickly for you: If something that seems supernatural is then explained by science, even if its fake science, that makes it SCIENCE FICTION. I don’t care if your story has zombies, vampires, or Killer Klowns from Outer Space, if you explain their existence through science, then its Science Fiction. Please, for the love of my sanity, stop fucking this up.

So what is Horror?

Horror is the super-natural. Horror is the unexplained. Horror is ghosts, monsters, and anything that we can’t say “this is logical” or “science made this” to rationalize. There may even be a religious quality to horror (ghosts being the physical manifestation of souls for example), but the bottom line is that you cannot explain away a horror element. It exists for no rational reason, and that is why it is scary.

But, then again, this cat exists for no rational reason and I’m not really afraid of it…

Should I be?