If you like horror, whether in literature, movies, video games, etc., what do you prefer? Bloodbaths and gore, or subtlety and nothing explicit?
My Take
I like subtle horror the most, but I can appreciate a good bloodbath if it’s well used.
Subtle cosmic horror. The implications.
For example, image diving into a deep ocean, and it gets darker, until there is no light left - and a few lights dint somewhere, and you dive on.
It could be that the story mentions the lights very casually, as nothing relevant, merely for detail; but that you sense hints of the water vibrating, knowing not whence it comes.
What is it? The reader is left to interpret. Is it a large sea monster? Merely a few bioluminescent worms swimming by? Are you making up things?
Nobody knows; and that fear is the unknown.
I love Silent Hill because of that, just sound of steps while there is wind at the background, while you walk you can hear how your radio starts to play static noise, and then, you are in a room full of flesh
I used to be about the slashers, but now I like stuff that makes you use your imagination. It’s hard to make something that will scare a large group of people, but if it gets you to engage your mind or feelings to fill in the gaps, it fills it in with things you do find scary.
I just watched Weapons last weekend. I wasn’t expecting much, it sounded like a simple plot, but it really created a disturbing vibe that was creepier to me than the on scene deaths. It kept my attention throughout and though the ending went gorey, I think it would have been just as good without showing the result.
I like David Cronenberg’s approach. Make it visually horrific, but so alien that you don’t know how to visually parse it and it just overloads your brain into ‘blech’ territory.
Loved The Thing and Videodrome for this style of horror.
Otherwise, give me omnipotent horror. Things like Oculus really get me.
