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Comments
"We don't need to know anything about the monster at the end of a work. "
This sounds boring and completely unfrightening.
In any case, information is power, power is a weapon. Knowing a monster arms the protagonists (and, internally, the audience) against it. It's usually more important than a big gun or magic sword because it reveals a special weakness.
Only having the scantest idea about what the monster is and is capable of is frightening because there's no way of predicting or understanding it. It gets the audience's own imagination running so that they begin to frighten themselves moreso than the book. This is how horror works.
Look at Alien. It produced one of the greatest modern monsters with a minimum of explanation -- until that explanation became relevant to the viewer, and usually retroactively such as in the case of the life-cycle. That film reaches an apex in horror when the adult Alien claims its first victim. There's a bit of a reveal there, because, as an audience, we finally get an inkling of what we're up against. But we don't understand it.
Or are you afraid of the things you can't do because of what death brings?
I had a post similar to Madass ~highfive~ but he put it better than me >_>
Everyone is equally vulnerable to the unknown, but unstoppable is relative to the protagonist.
A Mad Ass.
>_>, but yeah, I'll just parrot what you have to say now... Squack.
Only the unknown.
I understand where you are coming from, and I agree, but that's not the actual use of "Unstoppable" that's the illusion of unstoppable, which still relies on the unknown.
Its this combination of factors that make the Alien both frightening and intriguing. By the middle of The Terminator, for instance, we know the machine's intellectual process. Michael Myers is restricted by human limitations. The Predator turns out to be an ugly dude with a nasty gun.
But the Alien and his grandpappy Dracula aren't just powerful, they're a mystery.
Dracula being the grandpa to Aliens made me laugh for a second XD
The Predator was certainly a thing, but it was a monster that held back. I don't fear the Predator, because without weapons I'm not good sport. It's a prime example of having a rift between the audience and the protagonists instead of bringing them closer together.
As for Mike, he still has to walk and is still subject to physical forces and the like. He's too human to truly be considered something "unstoppable" -- it's the fear of extended conflict in the protagonists that make him strong rather than his own innate abilities.
You'd only fear him for the possibility of dieing, which isn't a fear of Michael, but a fear of dieing.
Fail that and you've got nothin'.
From my perspective, Mike is only scary because I'm unaware of his limitations. I know ways to fight a dude into submission or make a quick kill, even without a sword, but I'd want to know if I'm wasting my time on it. That's still a step or two more than the people he targets, though, so already there's that distance between audience and protagonist. Although that isn't the fault of the filmmakers.
Mainly because horror protagonists are some of the most fucking retarded people ever.
That seems more realistic to me, you try to test the limits of your audience.
"Michael Myers got shot in the face and he's still walking"
But then t
^ Even then, bullets have their limitations. Can Mike keep going with a twisted and broken neck? And limbs? Bullets have a status in media as being the be-all and end-all of wounds, but one can do worse with their hands or a close-combat weapon.
He would be nothing more than a disease that has the chance to kill you if you don't take precautions against it.
^^ I'm saying that for the horror to work Alex,
It can be played for horror that Michael may actually be unstoppable.
A man's just a man.