For anyone thinking of writing about the horror genre, there are certain situations that, over the years, have been done so often that audiences know exactly what to expect. Using either of these is fine if you’re being postmodern and tongue-in-cheek like in the Scream series, because you can make the audience laugh as they jump. But if you’re trying to give yourself a big scare, here are some situations to avoid and alternative scenarios to consider.
The woman alone in the old dark house
She is usually blonde, with large breasts and not very bright. She yells things like “Who’s there?” or “Are you Joe?” She then goes into dark rooms to see what is in them. Tippi Hedren plays a good example in The Birds, as does Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. This scene has been lampooned so successfully by the Scream series that it will be hard for anyone to do it again; but if necessary, you will have to find a new way to increase the tension. Women have been blinded, as a man has been made to be stalked by a woman. But what if the stalker exists inside the mirrors and can only be reached at arm’s length? What if he gets a knife?
The child who is a mother is no longer a mother
The child says, “That’s not my mom.” A cocky doctor says, “It’s all in your mind, kid: Mommy takes the kid, and the next day both mommy and kid give the doctors distant stars. This was a staple in paranoia movies.” from the 1950s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Invaders from Mars, and given a new lease on life in Dark Skies. It takes some serious thinking to give it a new perspective. What if it’s the pets that are taking over?, and only the children notice?
The experiment went wrong
They say things like “Morality is for lesser mortals” and “The end justifies the means.” Then their creation jumps up and bites them. Think of all the movie versions of Frankenstein or Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and you can’t go wrong. A more recent example was Beau Bridges in Sandkings, the pilot of the modern Outer Limits. Anyone planning to use this scenario should really meet some scientists. Many of them are stranger than their fictional counterparts and provide excellent story material.
the crowd of villagers
Sometimes there is a ringleader, like an old woman whose grandson has been killed. Other times there’s just an angry mob yelling “rhubarb” and waving torches. Perhaps the best example is actually in a parody, Young Frankenstein. How about trying a quiet peat? I can’t think of a new way to do this that would be scary, but maybe you can do better.
The priest who has lost faith
There are two ways this can go. The creature says “Your weak god means nothing to me” and kills the priest in a particularly bloody manner. Or the creature says “Your weak god means nothing to me” and the priest climbs onto the base and drives the creature away. There are good examples of the former in Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and John Carpenter’s The Fog. Could you try to get the creature to banish the priest to hell? I haven’t seen that…yet.
Running through the woods in the dark
People run in the dark, yelling things like “Mulder, where are you?” and waving lanterns, followed all the while by a malevolent presence in the trees. This is also known as The Blair Witch Project. The idea was taken to the extreme in Pitch Black, where there was not even hope for dawn to come. A variation would be to do it in daylight, but Big Arnie covered that in Predator. How about having the monster as an urban creature that is actually afraid of the forest when being chased? Time for that angry mob again, maybe?
Playing with the dark forces
Someone says, “Let’s play with Grandma’s Ouija board.” Next thing you know, a planchette is flying across the room on its own. This idea has come up a lot on TV recently and usually involves scantily clad girls, on shows like Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. How about a character who mouths the words as he reads them, thus calling the beast by accident?
The love of a good woman.
The monster meets an ignominious death and someone says: “It was beauty that killed the beast.” Our caveman ancestors probably told this around campfires. In the movie it goes back to at least 1933 and King Kong. More recently, there was a variation on the TV series Beauty and the Beast and even the Disney movie of the same name. Why not try to make the beauty fall in love first while the beast never succumbs? You’d need to find a good resolution for the story, but then again, you’re a writer, so it’ll be easy 🙂
let’s split
Everyone knows the monster is somewhere, but someone says, “We’re off to explore that dark place. Go the other way and we’ll meet up later.” Why does everyone always think it’s a great idea? Just watch Buffy TVS and count how often the gang gets lost. Or she goes back to the original Scooby gang and watches Shaggy and Scooby drift apart every episode. Why not have them stay together for a change? Or maybe they keep in touch through cell phones to fool the bad guys. Or, better yet, what about a monster that can split and be in two places at once?
I am free
The monster has been defeated, the victor turns to the other survivors to receive the cheer, and is bitten to pieces by the suddenly resurfacing monster. There are good examples in Starship Troopers and Deep Rising. Would one way to subvert this be to have another monster save your victim? Or how about doing something brave and making your monster die on the first try?
conclusion
I’m going to write my new script “Chomp!” It begins when a mob of angry villagers storm the lab of a mad scientist who has been dabbling in powers that man is not meant to understand. The priest with the mob is killed by a “creature” that escapes into the woods.
A year later, 10 nubile teenagers are shipwrecked on the island. They split up to search the area and found themselves being chased by a mutated, half-man, half-Komodo dragon beast-man. Soon there is a lot of racing through the woods at night and a tense scene where a blonde gets trapped in the ruins of the lab.
The big climax comes when the last two teenagers face the monster. The boy believes he has killed him and turns around in triumph, only for the beast to rise up and tear him to pieces.
In a touching final scene, the last girl cradles the monster’s head in her lap and cries as it dies.
Do you think it will sell? If your answer is “No”, what would you do to make it work?