Fantasy vs. Reality

In the last few days of class I really began to wonder what style of movie is more horrifying. I started to wonder if a unrealistic creature or something that a bit more realistic. The big difference for me is the ability for myself to really put myself in the position of the characters in a film and whether or not I can even imagine ever accepting the monster in a film.



When it comes to unrealistic monsters I would consider things like vampires and werewolf's and such. Mythical creatures and creatures of myth are just lost on me. I feel as if I have had the images of these "monsters" shoved in my face so long that I have habituated to their appearance and the stereotypical personalities they tend to have in film. It is hard for me to put myself in the shoes of a character involved with these creatures because I simply cannot convince myself in the least bit that there is any way, in any world, in any odd chain of events that I would ever encounter such creatures.



For me the most terrifying monsters are the ones that are more “real” to myself and my own imagination. Before I explain more, this is important to point out, just because I say “real” doesn’t mean they are any more possible than the “unrealistic” ones I pointed out. Monsters such as the creatures in Alien and the aliens in War of the Worlds (the newest remake) are the type that are really able to put me on edge.
Again, this has nothing to do with me thinking I am any more likely to ever see one of these monsters than I am to see a vampire or a Frankenstein type of monster. The difference for me seems to be a sense of “biological possibility” instead of the actual chances of the monsters being realistic. Another type of monster that really is effective in my eyes are zombies. I am not thinking of zombie in the traditional sense, but instead the 28 Days Later style of zombie, though it can be argued they are “infected” and not so much zombies.



28 Days Later in my opinion was one of the most effective scary movies I had seen in a long, long time. The main thing for me was that it really was easy to feel the characters sense of helplessness because of the situation that is presented. The “monster” (a massafication type) is not mysterious either as they are explained to be a result of a experiment on a virus that was tested on monkeys and was spread to humans. The method of “monsterfication” also hits home because of real life epidemics that began with animals such as Bird Flu and Mad Cow Disease. The connection with real life events and the “scientific” explanation of the events is what really made this movie and the other horror movies I enjoy seem real to me and therefore effective as horror films.