Okay, so my most fave genre is horror, but what i most want to know is what scares you? Is it psychological horror, or is it blood, guts and terror that does it for you? Film wise, I grew up on stuff like 'Friday the Thirteenth', and 'Nightmare on Elm Street', but the only films that really left an impression were the 'Blair Witch' or more recently, 'The Counjouring'. I guess what I really want to know is, what really scares the sh#t outta ya?
Possession and demons have always been quite unnerving to me. It has to be very well written though, or else it quickly becomes cheesy. The only movie that left me viscerally scared, in more recent times, was the Babadook.
Blood and guts aren't really scary to me - I love schlocky movies like that. It's more gross-out than anything and while it's considered 'horror' I don't think anyone really finds it horrifying, do they? The creepy, eerie, unnerving stuff is where it's at. I write horror myself but I think my fears are a bit weird/uncommon and not especially accessible: entropy and the breakdown of physics (more generally, the literally inexplicable; the impossible). So trying to make those scary to other people is my thing. More generic stuff that gets to me include darkness, being stared at, eye gore (that's not horrifying so much as a squick), body horror (think Silent Hill) ... When I was a kid I was terrified of the idea of the Invisible Man, because he could be right next to me and I wouldn't know. Circles back to the inexplicable.
Being trapped. Not necessarily claustrophobic, but the loss of all control over one's situation. The thing that freaked me out about Silent Hill (the movie, never played the game) was the thought that all those religious loonies were trapped in a literal Hell, and no matter what they did, or how gruesomely they died, the implication was that it wasn't over for them and never would be.
Personally it's loss of my mental faculties...basically...going insane...losing my mind. Which is probably weird considering I love Lovecraft.
Kidnapping, rape, torture, murder. That's the real scary stuff... because it's real and does happen. Base it on a real messed up story. Dead babies too. Pedos. But that's another level of scary. That's like mind effing. A character who is capable of those things, does those things, and then the scene starts with his latest victim. EEEEEEEEEK. Got to be difficult to write though... Easier to make up some demon or ghost, because they aren't human. When the horror is actually possible, more so if it has happened, I think that has much more impact of HOLY CRAP THIS IS TOO MUCH.
Loss of sensation. Not be able to see color, or hear music or the voice of my beloved, to be unable to taste and smell foods, desserts, and wine, and last to be unable to feel the touch of another person. To live life numb, that idea is what scares me. That and insects. Insects creep me out.
A novel based on a serial killer (or several) with your take on horror, based on a victim of your imagination. Now THAT is a good horror story I think. You can't leave any detail out, even the poor dead babies... Look into the killer known as the Candy Man. He would rape and kill boys. Base it on some disgusting being like him, and you got one of the scariest characters out there...
Any type of home invasion scenario terrifies me. I couldn't even watch the promos for the original Purge movie because it sent my anxiety off the charts. My home is my safe place and the idea of anyone coming into it and hurting me or my family is just about the worst thing I can imagine happening to me.
One of the things that has given me chills in novels is people gradually coming to the realisation there is already someone else in the house with them. Koji Suzuki did this really well in Spiral. This had a lot more impact on me than jump scares in novels. I think it's basically those moments where you have that instinctive feeling that something is just wrong but you're not sure why. Like how it can be quite unnerving to see animals acting just a bit too human but you're not certain what it is exactly about it that is making you on edge.
That which cannot be seen or its whereabouts known. This is why the original ALIEN film is such perfection. You hardly saw the xenomorph. Ridley Scott didn't make a pornography of the creature. For most of the film it was down the tunnel, down there, in the dark, around the corner, hiding. When I go to the beach and the water is clear (I live in the Caribbean), I'm cool, I'm fine, all is good. If the water it turbid, I won't go any deeper than where the water hits my boy parts. Same beach, same water, same fauna within it, but if I can't see, then no.
The concept of death. Thinking about funerals: emotions, money, people; also, what's beyond death? Where the spirit goes next?
Blind acceptance and the lack of questioning evident in some youth, - or hell, in anyone at all for that matter. Especially in the face of most advertising and all corporate culture inane babble that attempts to sound nice & humane.
Teeth. Anything to do with teeth. Sitting in a dentist chair, flat on my back, things in my mouth, lights in my face, that f***ing antiseptic smell of rubber and plastic, people in masks leaning over me, watching the Novocaine approach and then disappear from my field of vision, wondering if Dr. Tony has his A game today or is a little hungover, thinking that this is what torture would look like in the moment before it begins... and I need to get a filling tomorrow... (shudders)...
To me horror comes from a long build up of anxiety, not jump scares and not even anything horrible happening. Remember the long winding road loading up to the mansion in The Shining while the creepy music played? Literally nothing was happening, but it was still pretty chilling. This is one of the more terrifying scenes from film that I can remember: The slow build up coupled with the fact that you can't see anything (but not because of poor lighting like most horror movies) makes the key change in the music at 2:07 dig into your core. A shark is the ultimate villain to me: it can't be bargained with, you never know where it is, it's completely relentless, and worst of all, it's not a fictional beast.
Well it is best to say that it helps the plausible in reality the situation is. So supernatural things fall short. Also creepy realistic dolls, with those soul stealing eyeballs of theirs.
I was thinking about it some more. I think the particular scene I posted above is so scary because it's a slow build of anxiety while they are fishing and Brody looks at shark attack pictures. You get a sense that something bad is about to happen, and that is by a false climax where it rips the dock down, both setting the stage and establishing the sheer power of the beast. Then there is a sense of security. The shark is heading out to sea, the music is going down, and the fisherman is simply swimming back to land. Immediately after though, BAM! The real climax when the dock turns around. That false sense of security was important, if the fish had simply pulled the dock down and attacked him, it would not have been scary.
i'm with @making tracks . some of the most chilling moments in books i've experienced were when the author made me feel "safe", and then pulled the rug out from under me by revealing that the evil bad guy has been in the dark corner the whole time. as @newjerseyrunner put it, the false sense of security is what does it. A moment that jumps to mind is in the first book of The Felix Chronicles. a single guy has been renting this rundown, moldy home in an all-but-abandoned part of town. he's sitting silently in the dim, dingy kitchen, writing a trashy news article for a gossip rag while lamenting how badly his talent as a journalist is being wasted. Over his shoulder a voice offers a casual comment on his work and he jumps out of his seat with a cry of fear. in short, t's a serial killer who has appeared briefly throughout the story. the author does a fantastic job of building him up as a seriously creepy dude, so having him pop out of nowhere in the middle of this guy's ruminations was jarring. but the part that really got me the most was at the end of their interaction (paraphrased): Serial killer: "You have a great basement. did you know you have a really great basement?" Guy: "No, I've never been down there." "I know you've never been down there. Do you know how I know that you've never gone down to the basement?" (scared out of his ever-loving mind) "No." "I know that because I've been living there for two weeks." my clumsy description doesn't do it justice. this sequence creeped me the hell out.
