Scary Movies and Books that Creep

It is generally considered to be a given that scary movies will always be scarier than so-called scary books. People tend to resort to the age-old argument that on the page you just cannot replicate the shocks (those life-affirming jump-out-of-your skin moments) that are achieved so easily on celluloid. And, to a point, this is true. In a movie, you can just have a character going about their business and then have something leap out at them and shout, “boo!” at the top of the voice. And then watch as both the character and the audience fend off a heart attack. With words on the page this is much more difficult. People read at their own pace. They dip into and out of a book. They may also skip parts, including that carefully designed, so terribly slow, perfectly paced build-up to the big scare.

Having said that, it is possible to engineer a shock moment on the page. Using long, languid sentences that slowly build to a line that seems to trickle off the page, it is possible to ease a reader down into a state of calm, composure, and serene stillness. And then unleash the beast. Now, I’m not suggesting that this thought-up-in-a-second is a notable example of this, but it does show what can be done. If you remain unconvinced, however, let’s look at this effect in the hands of a master. Directed by the late, great Stanley Kubrick, the movie of The Shining remains a pinnacle of the genre with many stand-out moments that will leave your hair standing on end. Think of the movie’s protagonist Jack Torrence kissing a naked woman who is then revealed to be a diseased old woman covered in sores. Or how about poor old Dick Halloran? He arrives at the hotel with the intention of saving the stranded family only to be cut down by Jack with an axe. And what about Wendy Torrence? She’s just coming to the realisation that her husband might be insane when Jack slides into view behind her. “But this is a movie,” I hear you cry. “This sort of effect is easy for the maker of movies. What about the humble writer stuck with having to write words on a page?” Funny you should ask that.

The Shining is based on the equally famous and admired (by fans of the genre) book. Written by Stephen King when he was primarily known as a writer of horror, it demonstrates the sort of approach to writing a scary scene I outlined earlier. Only much more effectively. Consider another encounter with the woman that Jack encountered in the movie … but consider it the way King wrote it in his book:

Danny stepped into the bathroom and walked toward the tub dreamily, as if propelled from outside himself, as if this whole thing were one of the dreams Tony had brought him, that he would perhaps see something nice when he pulled the shower curtain back, something Daddy had forgotten or Mommy had lost, something that would make them both happy―

     So he pulled the shower curtain back.

     The woman in the tub had been dead for a long time.

The effect orchestrated by the careful placement of the words, by the gentle, delicate rhythms that are so suddenly undercut in one short, sharp stroke, would ensure that King will always bear the moniker The King of Horror. Whether he wants to be known as The King of Horror or not. Despite of this early success in translating the jump-scare from the screen to the page, King’s work is not peppered with examples of it. The only other example that had anywhere near the same effect on me was at the end of Pet Sematery:

The steps ended directly behind him. Silence. A cold hand fell on Louis’s shoulder. Rachel’s voice was grating, full of dirt.

     ‘Darling,’ it said.

Note, however, that the effect here is quite different. The punchy, staccato build up suggests violence. The words themselves suggest decay. But the final line undercuts all of this with something far worse: misplaced hope. We never see what happens to Louis. We never see what Rachel does to him. But we don’t need to. That final, three-word line, so simple and yet so chilling, terrifies more than a page of detailed bloodletting ever could. It is interesting to note how Pet Semetery’s terse and terrifying final encounter was reworked for the ending of the movie Insidious with possessed husband Josh Lambert greeting his unaware wife Renai sending shivers up the spine.

So, the jump-scare can be done on the page. So, why then do we not see it more often? It turns up every other minute in every other horror movie these days. The simple reason is that less is so much more. Even the great Steven Spielberg lamented that he only managed one genuinely effective jump-scare in Jaws (I guess after a disembodied rotting head floating into view, a shark poking its snout out of the water was never going to have the same impact). So, why don’t we see it more often in print? The answer may lie in the fact that people who like stories want different things from stories printed on a page compared with stories projected onto a screen. The greatest written horrors have always dealt in something that you do not see so much of in movies these days: a malingering atmosphere of dread.