Can a movie be horrific if you never actually see a monster? According to Noel Carroll, in order to be considered an example of art-horror, a work must have a monster. Going even further, he gives requirements that the monster must be impossible according to modern science, it must be out of place in its environment, and it must be threatening and impure or disgusting. Can a monster that is never actually shown on screen meet these requirements?
Jacques Tourneur certainly thought that a good horror movie could be made without ever showing the monster. In his movie Cat People, Irena is never shown transforming into a cat. Only briefly is she on screen as a cat, and we mostly see her as a normal woman. Even so, the audience is sure that she can turn into a cat and is unnatural because of the unexplainable things that happen such as the robe being torn to shreds.
In the Night of the Demon, another one of Tourneur’s films, the monster is shown twice. This was, however, against the wishes of Tourneur, who never wanted to actually show the monster. He wanted to just give a glimpse of him. I think this move would have been more effective. Throughout the movie, we witness strange things happening such as the cyclone, the cryptic messages, and the pages being torn out of Dr. Holden’s planner. Obviously, some evil force was coming into play. As suspense builds up, the audience becomes more and more anxious about what is going to happen. Then, when the cloud of smoke and the monster come out of the sky, it is almost comical and seems unreal. If Tourneur had left the image of the monster up to the audience’s imagination, I think it would have been much more frightening.
One movie that does employ the theory of never showing the monster is the Blair Witch Project. In this movie, which is made in the style of a documentary made by three teenagers, we hear stories from people being interviewed by Heather, Josh, and Michael about an old legend concerning a witch. One lady says that the witch is a woman with thick hair like fur on her arms, so the monster was briefly described. We then see the teenagers going into the woods to investigate. Strange things start to happen in the woods. They find seven piles of stones, supposedly the graves of the seven children who were killed by the witch, and hear weird noises at night. Their tent shakes, they find three piles of rocks around their tent, and they find a ton of stick figures hanging in the woods. One morning, they wake up and Josh is not there. Later Heather finds a bundle of sticks tied together with strips of Josh’s shirt and when she opens it, there is blood inside. Because of all of these terrifying and possibly supernatural events, we know that something horrible is going on. Even at the end, when the three teenagers are supposedly killed, we do not see the antagonist. Most of the details about the monster and what happened to Heather, Josh, and Michael are left to the viewers’ imaginations.
Even if a monster is not seen, it can be threatening, impure, and disgusting because of the mere thought of it. It is not really necessary to visually see the monster if you are aware of the awful things it can do. This is especially true if supernatural things that cannot be explained by science are happening. In this case, the audience would be sure that the antagonist was not of this world. Therefore, I think that it is possible for a movie in which the monster is never actually shown to still be categorized as a horror by Carroll’s definition, and it may in fact be even more horrific than a movie in which the monster is shown.
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