I have learned that there are three main types of horror, and as my favorite internet reviewer Yahtzee stated so cleverly on his show Zero Punctuation, there's:
1) the kind where you're in a dark room and a guy in a spooky mask jumps out of a cupboard and going abloogy woogy woo
2) the kind where the guy in the mask isn't in the spooky cupboard but you know he's right behind you and he's going to go abloogy woogy woo at some point but he doesn't, and your getting more and more tense but you don't want to turn around cause you know that he might stick his cock in your eye
3) and then there's are the kind where a guy in a spooky mask goes abloogy woogy woo while standing on the far side of a brightly lit room before waking slowly over to you plucking a violin and then slapping you in the face with a tea-bone steak.
He says that number two is best because your brain is doing most of the work, and I wholeheartedly agree. When I watch or read anything horror the monster that I imagine is waiting for me in the dark corner is much more terrifying than something that stands right in my face and screams bloody murder trying to get a rise out of me.
The first time I watched the movie Paranormal Activity I couldn't sleep normally for months because I was absolutely terrified t go to bed. This movie consisted of a demon you couldn't see and two people being terrified out of their minds while lying in the comfort of their own beds. I would lie awake in my bed at night just thinking "what if that creaking I heard was the demon!" or "what if it yanks my covers off and pulls me down the hall by my foot!" I hadn't been so scared to go to bed since I was little and was afraid there were monsters under my bed. It was then that I realized, the reason I was so scared of Paranormal Activity was because it gave me the terrifying feeling I had when my mom turned off the light and set me to bed. It was fear of the unknown. The void darkness was absolutely terrifying, the horrible things I imagined were waiting to nom on my head the second I left the safely of my covers was paralyzing. And that's what i felt with this movie, only the movie took away the comforting idea that my covers were an indestructible force-field that could protect me from the nasty monsters. This is an example of successful horror that gets in your head and messes with you, staying with you long after you turn off the t.v. of put down a book. True horror can get in your mind and make you want to wash your brain of everything you just experienced before your paranoia comes back to bite you in the butt again.
In conclusion: horror that utilizes imagination for the fear factor is most effective.
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