There's definitely a distinction between being shocked and being frightened. I also think there are differences between being afraid and being horrified. I don't believe that anyone can ever be TRULY driven to fear just by watching a movie, assuming they're not delusional or mentally ill. They can be scared, shocked, grossed out, or horrified, but I just have a hard time buying that they experience true fear in the sense that you fear for your life. The kind of fear I'm talking about is more of an instinct and the kind of thing that causes you to lose control of your bowels/bladder, freeze up, struggle to breathe, blackout, etc. If someone told me they had that kind of reaction to a movie, I'd think they had probably better turn off the tube!
I think of being shocked much like the "flinch response." You have that "oh!!" moment of surprise when something catches you off guard. I never liked this feeling. I agree with you that games are good at this kind of response. In my opinion it's a very easy thing to do. Heck, I can run up to most people and yell "BOO!!!" when their back is turned, or even take a quick step towards them, or act like I'm throwing something at them--you get the idea. I'm not really impressed, either, with the "shock jocks" who get off on suddenly saying something rude or inappropriate. The trouble with that is, you can only "shock" somebody with the same schtick only so many times. Once they come to expect it, it loses its effect.
So that leaves the last category, horror. Now, I think that horror is more of a mental activity that requires lots of imagination and dread that takes awhile to build up and really seep into you. Sometimes you are so horrified by a movie that you can have nightmares about it, or even get scared when you go back to your place and get ready for bed. Some people can't even turn the lights off! Now, in my opinion it takes a great horror author or director to really accomplish this. Gore or shock alone doesn't cut it. Instead, the movie (book, or game) has to stimulate your imagination to the point where you basically horrify yourself.
A great example of this happened in the original FEAR. I remember playing it and suddenly seeing a little girl go running past. It happened so quickly I wasn't even sure that I actually *saw* it; perhaps I only imagined it. It really creeped me out, and as I continued to play, I started to dread what was inevitably going to happen when I came across that girl again. I didn't know--but I kept imagining scenarios in my head that got increasingly ugly. In short, I did more to horrify myself than the game actually showed--just a quick movie of a girl running past--and the rest was all in my head. That's what a master of horror knows that an amateur just can't grasp--that you can horrify somebody far better by NOT showing things than by putting them on the screen, close-up, in photorealistic detail. Hell, I remember being horrified by Sauron in the Lord of the Rings books precisely because Tolkien never trotted him out for us to look at. The movies did that almost instantly, ruining the horror. Once you've SEEN it, it just isn't as horrific.
I'm rambling on a bit here, but my argument holds well when we talk about games. Indeed, a game with abstract graphics could very well be far more horrifying than another with full cinematic realism, simply because the latter might "spoil" the horror by indulging in too much showing. On the other hand, the game with "worse" graphics might (by necessity, perhaps) not show certain things, making it a lot more horrifying.
One more example--a movie that horrified me as a kid was the original Night of the Living Dead. However, it wasn't the movie itself, but rather the thoughts it stimulated. I kept thinking about what it would be like if the events in the movie happened in real life--the movie expertly insinuated those thoughts into my head, so I kept turning them over and over, and getting more and more scared in the process. The later movies were perhaps too "realistic," and never had that effect on me.
There's definitely a distinction between being shocked and being frightened. I also think there are differences between being afraid and being horrified. I don't believe that anyone can ever be TRULY driven to fear just by watching a movie, assuming they're not delusional or mentally ill. They can be scared, shocked, grossed out, or horrified, but I just have a hard time buying that they experience true fear in the sense that you fear for your life. The kind of fear I'm talking about is more of an instinct and the kind of thing that causes you to lose control of your bowels/bladder, freeze up, struggle to breathe, blackout, etc. If someone told me they had that kind of reaction to a movie, I'd think they had probably better turn off the tube!
I think of being shocked much like the "flinch response." You have that "oh!!" moment of surprise when something catches you off guard. I never liked this feeling. I agree with you that games are good at this kind of response. In my opinion it's a very easy thing to do. Heck, I can run up to most people and yell "BOO!!!" when their back is turned, or even take a quick step towards them, or act like I'm throwing something at them--you get the idea. I'm not really impressed, either, with the "shock jocks" who get off on suddenly saying something rude or inappropriate. The trouble with that is, you can only "shock" somebody with the same schtick only so many times. Once they come to expect it, it loses its effect.
So that leaves the last category, horror. Now, I think that horror is more of a mental activity that requires lots of imagination and dread that takes awhile to build up and really seep into you. Sometimes you are so horrified by a movie that you can have nightmares about it, or even get scared when you go back to your place and get ready for bed. Some people can't even turn the lights off! Now, in my opinion it takes a great horror author or director to really accomplish this. Gore or shock alone doesn't cut it. Instead, the movie (book, or game) has to stimulate your imagination to the point where you basically horrify yourself.
A great example of this happened in the original FEAR. I remember playing it and suddenly seeing a little girl go running past. It happened so quickly I wasn't even sure that I actually *saw* it; perhaps I only imagined it. It really creeped me out, and as I continued to play, I started to dread what was inevitably going to happen when I came across that girl again. I didn't know--but I kept imagining scenarios in my head that got increasingly ugly. In short, I did more to horrify myself than the game actually showed--just a quick movie of a girl running past--and the rest was all in my head. That's what a master of horror knows that an amateur just can't grasp--that you can horrify somebody far better by NOT showing things than by putting them on the screen, close-up, in photorealistic detail. Hell, I remember being horrified by Sauron in the Lord of the Rings books precisely because Tolkien never trotted him out for us to look at. The movies did that almost instantly, ruining the horror. Once you've SEEN it, it just isn't as horrific.
I'm rambling on a bit here, but my argument holds well when we talk about games. Indeed, a game with abstract graphics could very well be far more horrifying than another with full cinematic realism, simply because the latter might "spoil" the horror by indulging in too much showing. On the other hand, the game with "worse" graphics might (by necessity, perhaps) not show certain things, making it a lot more horrifying.
One more example--a movie that horrified me as a kid was the original Night of the Living Dead. However, it wasn't the movie itself, but rather the thoughts it stimulated. I kept thinking about what it would be like if the events in the movie happened in real life--the movie expertly insinuated those thoughts into my head, so I kept turning them over and over, and getting more and more scared in the process. The later movies were perhaps too "realistic," and never had that effect on me.
Matt Barton, Managing Editor
Location: St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA
Email: matt@armchairarcade.com