“Can’t I just like horror because it’s great? Does there have to be some big explanation?” – Stephen Graham Jones, ‘My Heart Is A Chainsaw’
It starts at the top of the hill. Pedaling your bike as fast as you can. Training wheels scraping uselessly against road, plastic flaking off on pavement. You’re going fast enough to get to the moon, but your goals are lower. Down the hill, sharp turn into the driveway, down that hill, stop at the bottom before you go flying into the river. You can do it, you’ve done it before. But this time, every monster is waiting for you at the bottom—werewolves, Frankensteins, Draculas, mummies—and they’ve captured your family. Mom, Dad, little brother. So you keep pedaling. Past driveway’s edge. Training wheels hit a rock and you go flying, higher and higher but not to the moon. Into the river. Then you wake up.
This was my first recurring dream. Make no mistake, it was a nightmare, BUT. It was kinda fun? I enjoyed it?
Is that why I like horror so much?
GIMME THEM THRILLS N CHILLS
The first thing I wanted from books was some adventure. Before I knew about colonialism, I fell hard for mummy stories. When you have the amount of social anxiety I had (sorta still do), the whole world is scary. If books explain the world, why not read the scariest books? Jade Daniels has Sidney and Laurie and Nancy and Ripley, I had terminally average guys named Evan in Goosebumps books. The thinking went (still goes): if you read enough books, then you can not only learn about the world, you can navigate its many horrors.
THE WORLD IS VAST
One thing about learning, is that it’s fun. One thing about the world, is even though it’s big and full of horror, it’s also big and full of wonder. Every locale has local legends, you know? One reason I loved the Anne Rice vampire novels so much was it coincided with a time where I was super nerding out about European history. After the zombie craze of the early aughts, I figured I’d never be interested in zombies again around 2013—until I took a workshop with my dear friend Chloe N. Clark and learned about the Haitian origins of zombies. Currently, I’m obsessed with Mapingauri, the Amazonian cryptid that protects the rainforest. First, I just learned about it a few years ago, and second, it speaks to my climate anxiety. Kind of a facilely perfect monster upon which I cannot help but glom.
HORROR AS A GENRE IS SURPRISING BUT KNOWABLE
The first time I watched Scream and Scream II, I didn’t know who Jamie Kennedy was, or anything about all his Jamie Kennedyness. I was also too impressionably young to be turned off by soul patches. All I cared about: Randy knew the rules of horror, and that was a fascinating look behind the curtain for me. Then again, I’m the loser who thinks learning is fun.
While I do classify myself as a horror writer, I bristle at genre. This is argued to death in other spaces, the genre v literary thing, but let me summarize my stance by simply saying I don’t want to write-by-numbers. That said, I find structure fascinating, and love working within structures to try to still surprise. Mal and I love pausing a movie when we think we’re at the hour mark—that crucial protagonist lock-in—and it’s thrilling to be like “I knew something was coming but that was nuts.” Horror, for my money, is best at this. Even when it’s something as relatively easy as a character you didn’t expect to die getting slashed up.
DO YOU LIKE METAPHOR AND ELEVATED HORROR
Sure, it’s because I was raised Very Christian. Sure, younger me was consumed by Good V Evil narratives. BUT! I do believe in demons. Maybe not cloven-hoofed imps, but I think “demon” is a great word to describe alcoholism, to describe the process by which people get radicalized by crank memes on Facebook, to describe raging out over sports bets, to describe the way getting behind the wheel of a car turns people into entitled anger monsters. If it’s pretty accepted now to talk about “the energy in a room” or “vibes,” I think it’s just as fair to talk about the demons flitting all around us. Either influencing one or two decisions or full-blown possessing us. The empiricist in me says it’s all outside stimuli and brain chemistry, but it’s demons.
The Babadook is about grief. It Follows is about STDs. The Wolfman is about fear of biological determinism. Friday the 13th and Halloween are about how you should tend to your babysitting duties and not have sex before marriage. Totally Killer is about how traumatic it is to have Don and Betty Draper as parents. Straight metaphors get heavy-handed after a while, though, right? I mean, Jordan Peele’s movies are too layered for this critique to really apply, but there’s only one Jordan Peele, isn’t there?
DOES HORROR HELP YOU COPE WITH REAL LIFE
It’s an Election Year, another one where we learn one political party is fine with concentration camps and another political party is fine with genocide as long as it’s somewhere else. Most of our neighbors cheer these political parties rabidly, and scold us if we don’t get on board. You learn about the horrors and cruelty that will become policy if the Republicans gain power. You learn about the horrors and cruelty that will be marginally reduced if the Democrats gain power. Again, you learn how bloodthirsty your neighbors are. You learn who will tell you to shut up if you bring up genocide and you learn who will tell you “it’s their own fault” if poor people and/or people of color and queer people are hurt.
Horror doesn’t help me deal with this. The adrenaline jolt that comes from horror is strong enough to make me forget, though.
IS THAT IT? ADRENALINE?
We’re right back on that bike with training wheels. Except the grown-up stoner dad who barely leaves his neighborhood seeks to live vicariously through the Shudder app on his TV. It might be that I’m a secret adrenaline junkie. I left weights while I write, etc. But did you read how involved that metaphor paragraph was? I went to college, my name is maybe Chris. It’s not just thrills.
SO DID YOU LEARN WHY YOU LIKE HORROR?
None of this really explains why some of my most blissful moments happen when everyone else in the house is asleep and I’m watching Samara Weaving give a wealthy family their bloody comeuppance. Or why, when Mal and I first saw Cabin In The Woods, we excitedly pushed the “WATCH AGAIN” button, even though it meant staying up until four a.m. None of this really explains why Brendan and I feel like we can honestly, seriously relate to David in American Werewolf in London.
And isn’t not knowing the scariest of all?
Sorry you got an email,
Chris