If you asked me what my least favourite genre was five years ago, I would have vehemently answered, ‘Horror!’ I spent most of my life avoiding it like the plague; even the tamest ghost stories gave me nightmares, and my weak stomach could never handle gore.
And yet, I’ve always been attracted to dark stories. As a three year-old child, my favourite movie was Watership Down — a film that has traumatised countless children (and adults). My all-time favourite episode of the Simpsons was Bart Sells His Soul and I felt that Spongebob peaked with Nasty Patty. There is something about that eternal, internal struggle between light and dark that has always enraptured and fascinated me.
A few months after I turned thirteen, The Sixth Sense debuted in theatres, and it was one of the first PG-13 movies I went to see. I spent the entire run time with a white-knuckled grip on my armrests and after I had nightmares for weeks, but even so, I described it as ‘the one horror movie I liked’ because of that amazing twist at the end. It stuck with me for a long time, but it wasn’t until years and years later that I would dip my toes into the horror genre again with the TV show, Supernatural.
The interesting thing is, I had been creating my comic, Children of Shadow, for about eight years prior to watching Supernatural. It wasn’t until I began watching horror — formerly my least favourite genre — that I realised I had been writing it.
The irrational fears of things we don’t understand, the dark corners of our own thoughts that we are afraid to acknowledge, the struggles, misconceptions, and maltreatment we experience when our brains stop working the way they should — these are the mainstays of horror. The genre is inextricably linked with mental illness. And mental illness just so happens to be the main theme of Children of Shadow as well. By tapping into the same well of allegories and symbolisms that horror does, I had unintentionally created a horror story.
Once I realised this, and once Supernatural, with its often goofy and campy comedy relief that softened the scares, had started to desensitise me, I began seeking out more horror films. I loved The Haunting of Hill House, but I had to turn off Legion after half and hour because I was getting literal heart palpitations. I loved Maniac and the reboot of Unsolved Mysteries but had to stop watching Paranormal Witness partway through season 2. I discovered that I did like the genre, but only a particular flavour of it. Gorefest slasher flicks still turn my stomach, demonic possession still gives me nightmares, and I’m not keen on watching anything that involves clowns. I found my flavour of horror was similar to the first horror story that stuck with me: a methodical, carefully crafted plot rife with twists and turns, a gothic melancholy tone, an uneasy sense that everything isn’t all right.
Now that I’m armed with a better understanding of the genre, I want to continue to write more horror in the future. And who knows, perhaps in doing so I will accidentally write another genre I never thought I’d touch.
I’m not much of a fan of horror myself. I blame my overactive imagination, which kind of leaves me paralyzed after I try reading/ watching it. Throw in my ADD which makes it hard for me to focus on the details of a “meatier” book and I miss a lot of the little twists and turns that might make a psychological thriller appealing to me.
I admit that while I generally avoid horror comics, I really enjoy reading paranormal stuff (short ghost stories, etc), even if scares the crap out of me.
I loved the blog post! I’m looking forward to reading more!
My overactive imagination plays havoc on me too, haha, which is why it took until my late twenties for me to give horror a real chance. I seem to handle the scares in comics a lot better than films or books, though.
Thank you for the kind words, it means a lot! I don’t know if I’ll be able to write entries of consistent quality, but I’m glad you enjoyed this one. :)
I’m not much for gore myself, but I’ve enjoyed all the M. Night Shyamalan movies I’ve watched. They all have that sudden twist towards the end.
I’ll have to give some of his other films a watch. :)
This was such an interesting read! Sometimes we need to take a step back to be able to see the bigger picture in the work that we’re so close to… but at the same time, I feel like it’s also a reminder that genre categories can be such arbitrary definitions, often more of marketing convenience than anything else. I don’t know I would easily label Children of Shadow as “horror” myself. I definitely find the story dark, and the ombras are most certainly nightmare fuel, and the characters do have viscerally horrific experiences… but I think for me, the relationships between the characters and the way you interplay other things in their experiences aside from the horror make it something much richer to me than “just” horror. But I guess all genres have complexities and nuances beyond the mainstream stereotypes, and well-thought out, multi-faceted stories are by nature challenging to classify!
I remember being super-mindblown by the Sixth Sense when I first saw it too. It really made me ponder what it takes to conceive and craft such a neatly composed story like that. (I still don’t know haha.)
But it’s also hard when one’s reputation ends up being built on such a specific kind of execution. Non-spoilery high level general commentary follows on Lady in the Water and the Village:
Lady in the Water I found really interesting especially as a storyteller, since you can kind of interpret it as a fairy tale about the creative process, and I personally didn’t think of it as being built around a singular “twist”. (Or maybe it’s been so long since I watched it that I have forgotten some of those things lol).
As for the Village, I thought it was one of those cases of the the setup being way better than the punchline. (I still haven’t seen Unbreakable or Signs yet, though I always intended to…).
So much food for thought! Thank you for writing and sharing this!
Oh wow, thank you so much for such a detailed and thoughtful response! It’s true, genre can be so hard to define, especially in indie works. I would struggle to classify Now Recharging for the same reasons. It’s sci-fi and slice-of-life but also more than that. Is there a genre name for a story that restores your faith in humanity? 😂
I admit the only other Shyamalan movie I’ve seen so far is Signs and I wasn’t quite as impressed by it, but I think that’s only because I don’t find aliens scary whereas ghosts I absolutely do. It made me realise that horror’s effectiveness hinges a lot on what the reader/viewer finds frightening.
Shortly after writing this post I watched The Ring — both the western remake and the original Japanese film — and it gave me very similar vibes to The Sixth Sense in its methodical buildup and carefully crafted twist.