It’s the spookiest week of the year, and Thomas Davies and Maddy Walters discuss whether paper or celluloid gives them a bigger fright and whether books or screen provide nightmares for longer…
FILMS – In my mind to have a successful horror story you need three things: involvement, tension and the ‘whoa factor’: the actual scare. In all three of these areas films and games are far better at creating a good scare than books.
As for involvement, a film is more accessible than a book to most people. I’m not saying books are difficult, it’s just films are undoubtedly easier. With a book the words create a barrier of sorts that could stop you from accessing the full dread of a page; the elaborate nature of the language takes away from the raw horror of what unfolds. Games throw you right into the action – you can’t get more involved than that.
For build-up in films and games we have sound. A well-placed soundtrack can do wonders for a scary scene: the odd noise, the whistle of the wind, the dramatic score of Psycho or Jaws, from creepy to heart-pounding. A book can’t provide quite the same experience. It can describe scary sounds but you, the reader, have to make them up in your mind which doesn’t have the same effect as actually hearing a sound. The anticipation of hearing a twanging string piece as the full moon rises is unparalleled in the world of literature even by some of the most evocative descriptions.
Finally, it’s the ‘whoa’ factor where films and games triumph over literature. It’s one thing to read about a goblin jumping on someone from behind, it’s quite another to watch it happen. The horrified expression of the victim, the repulsive look of the monster’s face and the desperate struggle that unfolds before your eyes is much more powerful on screen than when you read about it. This is particularly true in games where you are the victim; there’s definitely an added adrenaline as you fight off demons or zombies that appear out of nowhere. We humans use sight as our primary sense, and it’s films and games that exploit that to their fullest.
Horror films, games and books have a lot of things in common, but it’s only films and games that fully use all the tricks to their advantage. The visuals, the sound and the action suck the audience into the scene and force you to believe in the tale. You may create your own chills from books, but horror films are your worst nightmares.
Thomas Davies
BOOKS – We’ve all had the night: innocently drowsing, the mind wanders, and eyes lose their focus. Suddenly, the shadow created by the clothes hanging on the wardrobe transforms to the shape of the murderer/villain/mad-person from the horror story you haven’t quite been able to shake.
For me, it’s Jack Torrance, protagonist of The Shining. However, it is not Jack Nicholson who haunts my nightmares, but the image I invented for myself when reading the book as an innocent 15-year-old. Since then, I’ve watched the film, and, masterpiece though it is, there is no way the motion picture can compare to the captivating horror of the book.
This is due to the inherent process of reading itself. A book only provides descriptions, and leaves it up to the reader to colour in the details: the look, the person, the setting. The reader becomes part of the story and more importantly, the story becomes part of the person. The direct communication reading provides to the imagination-centre of the brain, the area that (for me, anyway) kicks into gear in the minutes before sleep, means that these are the images that greet my closed eyes on the night the wardrobe and its shadows begin misbehaving. Despite watching horror films before and after reading this book, it’s Jack that haunts my dreams, never the Ring-girl or Jigsaw.
When reading, the mind is active; it cannot look away. When watching, the mind is passive, we can close our eyes, hide behind the pillow, and shield ourselves from the images on the screen. When the images are inside the mind, they become harder to ignore, and possess us in a very real way.
I’m not going to deny that films can be terrifying. Many a night I have spent regretting my decision to watch The Ring, The Exorcist, or Saw, but the fact is that the two hours-or-so spent in front of the television are far more fleeting than the week-or-so spent with a novel. They take up more of my time, and thus become a greater part of my life. And while these films have the power to scare, they exist and will always exist as things in the physical world, regardless of whether I watch them or not. For me, however, a book comes alive when it is read, and much like a horror-story character, once I have given them life, they never seem to leave me alone.
Maddy Walters
[poll id=”63″]
Find Exeposé Books on Facebook and Twitter and tell us what you think!
exeposedev 