I do not deal well with horror. I never have. I think that’s why I kind of love it. I’m a bit weird about it. Like, if someone tells me something is scary in the remotest, I’ll neurotically avoid it like the plague. It’s annoyed quite a few friends and entertained quite a few others. I scream like a tea kettle, a very effeminate tea kettle.
Yet there’s a draw. I hate it, but there’s a part of me that just must know. The more abstact the terror, the more real it could be for me. It’s oxymoronic, but when those spooks blanket themselves under ignorance, I’m more awake. I think there’s one common element in all things that make me shit myself.
The fragility of being a person.
Worse yet, (and slightly less bombastically) the reminder that we are very likely only bodies. There are so many horror subgenres that spring out from that.
1. Body Horror
A lot of us could identify ourselves via our bodies. Not all of us identify with them and would very much like to change them, but a lot times they can be recognized. Imagine a friend. Now, they’re smiling at you. It’s the kind of smile with shared history, they’re going to want to catch up soon. Your friend’s arms, have they always been that long? Their ears, have they’ve always been so high up on their head? Why are their eyes so wet? Maybe they’re simply overcome with emotion. They’re going to want to catch up. The muscles around their face are becoming tired, twitching from holding a smile. Don’t be rude, this is an old friend-Oh! Here they come. Oh, did they have an accident? They’re limping. But, they’re still smiling as they stumble towards you, maybe it’s a funny story. They’re going to catch up.
They know you so well.
I would argue that body horror that scares me the most plays with familiarity. Pain is awful, and a creature that looks like it exists to be in pain and almost someone I know manipulates empathy both somatic (I feel it physically) and emotional (I feel it feely.) In games, I would point towards the Nosk in Hollow Knight.
This is a metroidvania by Team Cherry. In it you play this little adorable character who looks like they need help getting down the stairs.
You eventually find yourself in Deepnest. There are people who have already dived into what Deepnest is but essentially, it’s bug hell. While traveling the dark labyrinth that is bug hell, avoiding dangers, hearing non-stop scuttling; there in the dark, you can make out a figure. It looks like you. Hollow Knight does not feed you plot points, and yet here’s this character who looks like you. Maybe this is a reward for dragging yourself through such uncomfortable place. After all, you deserve a little nugget of easy-to-digest lore. You follow this doppelganger through a maze to a more open place as gates shut behind you, not a great sign video-game wise but hey-
There you see your own babyish visage waiting for you. Their head violently flips with sickening crunch, not a great sign in general. Their neck shoots out from their body juddering like a ribbed straw being pulled from a plastic cup. Their limbs snap and crackle to unfold to their true length like an arachnid. They inhumanly screech at you, because OF COURSE they do.
I was invested by the familiarity of the character, and the enticing potential of knowing more about the world building up, and all in this in an area that I'd rather NOT be, truthfully.
The fragility of how easily the idea of who a person is can warp and change. Messing with what we recognize as bodies and people, is horrifying. This relates to the very innate fear that being a person is sort of an illusion and we are only bodies that problem solve. Body horror can remind us of this.
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