Does Good Horror Have to End Unhappily?

First of all, I think I should reiterate the point that I just don’t scare. I’m not sociopathic–there are things in reality that freak the hell out of me, and it’s not like I would cheer a real life axe murderer on–but when I know it’s fake, I’m going to sit back and enjoy the ride. (Also, no startle reflex. Seriously, I just don’t jump. This is probably a bad thing.)

Anyway, after reading ‘House of Leaves’, I’ve realized that by far the one thing I hate most about horror (and, it seems, this is especially common in American horror) is a happy ending.

Review: ‘House of Leaves’ by Mark Z. Danielewski. Includes partial spoilers: no explicit details about the ending, but all sorts of implicit ones. Also, more rant than review.

Maybe a little bit of my disappointment comes from the fact that this was described to me as ‘super-scary’, which just sets the bar really, really high. (My golden standard is still ‘The Ring’–English movie, 2003 (?).) However, most of it is the fact that a) the literary fiction barely hits mediocre, and I’ve been on an Umberto Eco kick for at least the past three months, and he’s pretty much the god of run-ons; b) I recently read a few books by people who were either acquainted with or former junkies, and this one doesn’t read like one at all; c) the science is just terrible…have you ever seen a geologist offer a date without some kind of plus or minus?; d) Stephen King’s ‘Rose Red’ about an evil expanding house made the entire concept just amusing.

All in all, the whole thing reads like it was written by some punkass English major who knows all sorts of things about writing, especially in an academic style, but pretty much nothing about reality except through books and, maybe, an interview here and there. Considering the layered nature of the writing, I can’t exclude the possibility that it’s intentional (well, at least the non-Truant parts), but it just doesn’t work. The whole thing is caught in this uncomfortable limbo.

As to the ending…they wouldn’t have found each other, he would have ended up in asylum, and bits of frozen corpses would have tumbled out randomly after the house was sold to new owners. (Overkill? Not if you pace it out correctly. Actually, I have to call this just enough kill.)

Alright, so now that that’s off my chest…my favorite horror movies all end on a very ambiguous or negative note. ‘Secret Window’ has the corn; ‘The Ring’ has ‘she never sleeps’ (note: the graphic novel, and probably original novel, version of this actually improves on the bit where she copies the tape for her son…she calls up her own parents and asks them to do a favor for her son. It’s beautiful); huh…these are pretty much the two horror movies I like.

Then again, ‘The Grudge’ was pretty much terrible. But I think that was more execution than anything else: wooooOoooo haunted house! A…grudge! It just didn’t translate well.

Bookwise, the short story behind ‘Secret Window’ (‘Secret Window, Secret Garden’) has a lame ending where the good people win; although ‘Pet Sematary’ still has one of my favorite closing ambiguities. (I hear in the movie, she snaps his neck. It’s better in the book, where you can imagine them teaming up and just exponentially increasing the evil.) ‘Carrie’ is okay but not awesome…has anyone else written horror recently besides Stephen King? Seriously, there’s got to be someone else out there. I swear I’m missing someone (will have to go through my old booklists and see if I remember). I suppose ‘Uzumaki’ (more Japanese graphic novels) is a big pile of fun, but it’s more straightforwardly bizarre than anything else.

If you like the idea of literary fiction and happen to have an Authonomy account, go look up ‘Faust’s Butterfly’ (assuming it hasn’t been snapped up by publishers).

Anyway, maybe this is just a personal preference. But it’s hard to shake the sense that what makes a truly fantastic bit of horror is its ability to keep you up all night picturing the exact same thing happening anywhere, anytime…happening right now, to you.

And that’s just not possible when there’s a happy ending.

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