I’m also one of those weird freaks who generally does not get Horrorified. I get Squicked fairly easily, the sight of blood does not bother me but if you can get images of gore or mutilation past or in some horrible enough depth in the Uncanny Valley, I can’t handle it. But I don’t consider being Squicked to being horrified. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t necessarily feel that splatter or gore is some kind of False Horror, I’m really not quite as invested in horror enough to even have a stance that should be considered in any way meaningful, but like, if you ask me, saying gore induces terror is like saying a triggering of the gag reflex is nausea. You know what I mean? I think partially it’s because I am a strict materialist/atheist, so threat or the idea of threats from supernatural/metaphysical reality doesn’t tend to unsettle me. I’m definitely not bragging or positioning that outlook as superior, it’s just one way of looking at the world and it’s what works and makes sense for me. So any horror to do with supernatural forces doesn’t land. When something goes bump in the night in my house it’s never not going to be skunk or a racoon or something.
However, the facet of horror that can really get me is body horror. That reminds me, I was going to download Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Anyway. I think in terms of games that I have been consistently terrified while playing, Resident Evil 4 is probably the game I was most scared of while getting through it, and not because of the zombies if you know what I mean (I mean, they don’t help, but, you know). Actually, RESIDENT EVII__: BIOHAZARD was up there too even with less the 1st person perspective really contributes a lot to it. Another example that comes to mind is… well, this is adjacent to Constituting Spoilers, but… let’s just say some sections of Lisa: The Painful, despite it being pixel art, were too much for me! Actually, perhaps it’s specifically because it’s pixel art, even. There’s something about it that makes it more sinister, inhuman, vague, life-null…
Hmm, you know what, I’m now suddenly quite interested in how pixel art can be used to great effect in producing unsettling imagery. Makes me really think about how much the influence of Yume Nikki has spread out, and really, it’s kind of tough to say that anything in Yume Nikki is strictly Horrorifying, and I tell myself that I couldn’t get through it because the gameplay was anemic and tedious (and it is, no offense to it and hopefully none taken(talk about a walking simulator, am I right??)), but also part of me just feels unsettled from embodying someone within those places and needing to navigate them myself. Weird thing too, I don’t know if I feel all that much from watching it being played, either! It’s something about exercising agency within there, perhaps, that makes me feel unsettled. Shit, even Undertale and __Deltarune_ comes to mind, the Gaster sprite creeps me out, Jevil’s weird little dead eyes creep me out, and it’s just weird to think of something like that being in games like Undertale and Deltarune. I know that’s the point, too! It’s just an impressive testament to Yume Nikki’s influence.
If I were to make a thesis statement on how pixel art has a lot of horror value, it’s perhaps how pixel art is thought of and executed on as a stylized representation of something, rather than the thing itself. In other words, it already does depend on the idea that your imagination will fill in the gaps of what you’re seeing, and so the portrayal of disturbing imagery can be really good if it’s done in just such a way that will chokeslam the viewer’s imagination into an unsettling direction. Maybe the horror potential in a scary monster face can be high if graphical fidelity gets to the point of photorealism (I remember Bloodborne being scary a while ago, but I don’t think I feel that way anymore! Interesting thought), or, we can all recognize that the angry sun in Super Mario Bros. 3 or the mask that chases you in Super Mario Bros. 2 are also still a little bit unsettling in 2021. This is simple bargain bin takes on horror I suppose but I suppose the best creators of horror know that they are often going to be playing second fiddle to the imaginations and psyches of their audience. Ito Junji’s work comes to mind too because it’s so psychologically grounded in like “shower thoughts” level human understanding and interaction with the world. Uzumaki is about a shape?? But a lot of it is so creepy! That’s really impressive.
Literature: One of the very few novels I’ve read that legitimately disturbed me was American Psycho, I think probably because I bought in really hard on it for whatever reason, and I appreciate its narrative devices, namely the use of unreliable narrator, or, perhaps even, unreliable unreliable narrator. Which is overall funny if you ask me, not because the book isn’t funny, because it is funny, but I think as a novel it works really well in the way it whiplashes back and forth, it’s funny but it feels more disturbing that it is genuinely funny. It’s also in its own way social commentary I can get behind which doesn’t hurt, like, it’s hard to decide what is more horrifying in the end, the events of the novel being Real as in it’s a story about a serial killer with a tenuous connection to reality, or if it’s just your average financier losing touch with reality, and Patrick Bateman’s averageness is the real terrifying thing, the terrifying thing is that all of those financier types are Patrick Batemans. They’re tasteless, they’re shallow, they’re morons, they spend all day sitting around waving their dicks at each other in between sitting with their thumbs up their asses, they’re all serial killers in their own internal worlds, yet they’re also the Gods that created the world in their image, and they can do anything they want with impunity. Stop me if you’ve heard all of this from a male philosophy major in freshman year of college but it’s class consciousness horror, and while the movie is… “Fun,” I guess, I think it does a bit of a disservice to the book, it’s too fun in that movie spectacle, show the action kinda way, and the movie doesn’t make you root for the Protagonist I don’t think, but I guess there is some kind of charisma to the character in the movie whereas in the book the character is so immensely anti-likeable (not unlikeable, or loathsome, something indescribably repulsive) that it has a different effect on me. It’s terrifying to think of a psychology that is beyond human comprehension while still being implanted within a human.
Dang for someone who opened this post by saying:
I’m also one of those weird freaks who generally does not get Horrorified…
…I sure had a lot to say! This post is brought to you by Vyvanse.