response

“When I was a child, my cousins tricked me into watching Child’s Play 2 (Lafia, 1990). I saw a doll that was able to move and talk on it’s own and was intrigued, at first. Small moments tripped around in my mind, calling to my five-year-old mind that something was not quite right with this doll. Now, the particular moments of the film have been blotted out as I have reached my big age but what remains is a stark image of half of Chucky’s face that had been beaten off by one of the teenagers (preteens?) in the movie. After that night, I slept with my closet light on and the door open for almost ten years. And yet like Carroll, I ask myself, “why horror?” If, as she says, one of the main drivers behind horror is curiosity (Carroll 35), what is more curious to a child than figuring out the story behind the doll? Will I ever feel the sticky-hot shock of a frisson of fear running up and down my spine again? There is something compelling in horror’s curiosity that begs us to consider primacy. The illustrious first time one experiences something. What was the first thing that has ever scared any child? A booming noise? A shifting shadow across the bedroom? These initial fears are explored in Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922) and masterfully teased out through the blocky, claustrophobic style. Shadows triple in length here, exaggerating perspective and playing with the boundaries of the mind’s eye and the formal ends of the film. The simple raise of Orlok’s arm to point down a hallway creeps along the wall, moving our eyes along with it, a rehearsal in the corporeal manipulation that horror films entreat us to. Indeed, what is so compelling about Nosferatu is its ability to play with the simple tensions and fears of the first. Murnau’s manipulation of shadow and staggered editing to elongate time builds a meaty tension, something that many filmmakers are clamoring to recreate, still. The simplicity of the boundaries of Orlok’s body from the physical across the metaphysical allows the film to distort and carry the image just far enough for the mind to take over. From there, Orlok can be in any shadow, anywhere, at any time. To answer Carroll’s question, I think horror is compelling because it’s simpler to reach for in our minds than “not-horror.” I argue that the mind is already bent towards the abject and that the better question to ask is “why not horror?””