The Rules That Horror Films Live and Die By

It’s all about the high. The jolt of familiar anticipation as the drug hits the bloodstream, the sweet arc of it moving through the muscles and joints, tightening the shoulders, the abdomen, clenching fingers and jaw, rising through the body like a scream.

Adrenaline. The drug of choice among horror movie fans.

A confession: I love horror films. Most of my friends don’t get it. When they learn of my vice, they blink, disbelieving, as if they’d discovered I have a passion for demolition derbies. Some think getting freaked-out scared is painful, and pain is to be avoided. They don’t understand the difference between fear that is real and fear that is not. Others are just snobs--they classify any movie with a fright potential as a horror film, which they instantly confuse with a slasher film.

They don’t want to watch ghost stories, though the presence of a major name--Jack Nicholson, Nicole Kidman, Steven Spielberg--can tempt a few. A pop culture phenomenon such as “The Sixth Sense” can bring in a non-horror crowd. So can the current hit “The Others,” the kind of horror film that lovers of Merchant Ivory could appreciate. But even the ones who go will claim they just wanted to see “the performance” or the special effects. Not too many grown-ups will admit that it’s fun to be scared.

Certainly the horror highs that came so easily in youth are harder to find as the years trudge by. My first hit was a vicarious one--my mother telling me the story of the first scary movie she had ever seen, “The Mummy’s Hand,” and how that night she had mistaken a coat hanging in the front closet for the mummy’s linen-swathed arm. She pounced on the final words, and I screamed. It was heaven.

I came of age during the glory days of the slasher film. Shoulder to shoulder in the chill dark, my girlfriends and I screamed our way through “Friday the 13th,” “Halloween” and “The Fog,” urging each other into a frenzied communal reaction that can be achieved only by large groups of adolescent girls.

These days, there doesn’t seem to be as much to get stoked about--the self-consciousness of “Scream” only worked that once; the subsequent rip-offs are not worth the money. Slasher movies in general don’t work anymore; I’m old enough to want the good stuff, movies in which the supernatural and the psychological blur. I get distracted now when the acting stinks or the plot is inconsistent or when I can see the ending coming from the lobby.

“The Blair Witch Project” worked for me; so did “The Sixth Sense” (even though I thought the fact that Bruce Willis’ character did not carry his wounds with him, like all the other dead folks, was a major cheat). “The Gift” was really good (can Cate Blanchett do anything poorly?), in spite of the predictable ghost-of-Boo-Radley ending.

Recently, I went to see “Session 9,” the supernatural thriller set in a mental hospital, and for a few glorious moments I thought it was going to work, but as the weight of the exposition collapsed into a predictable ending, I realized I was wrong. “The Others” was much better, although the photosensitive children setup was horribly annoying--I spent much of the movie wondering if such a condition exists and why the mother didn’t just merely swap day for night and let her children out of the house once in a while.

These films prove how hard it is to make a truly great horror film--it’s not about high body counts or ghoulish makeup. Unfortunately, many horror filmmakers have bought into the snobbery about their craft; they apparently consider their audience too callow to be bothered with nuance of plot or inconsistent characters. They don’t see the difference between making an audience jump--which anyone can do with the right music and light--and really scaring them.

Both “Session 9” and “The Others” came so close to being really, truly scary, but both could have benefited from the True Horror Film Addict’s Rules to Good Horror Filmmaking:

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Rule 1: The ordinariness of the character’s real lives must be established convincingly and immediately. Demons in hell are not scary; they’re just part of the scenery. If a truly extraordinary set--a creepy, snowbound hotel (“The Shining”), an abandoned insane asylum (“Session 9”), a gothic country house (“The Others”)--is going to be used, then the behavior of the characters must be even more realistic. Nicole Kidman was so obviously and believably twitching in “The Others” that one could accept all the opening and closing and locking doors. Almost.

Rule 2: Signature creepy noises are good but should be chosen with care and used parsimoniously.

Ordinary sounds work best. Children’s laughter where there are no children is always a winner, as are footsteps (but not the laughable yet oft-used step-halt-drag variety) and sudden clattering of any sort. Mysterious music, adult laughter and/or weeping and cheesy malevolent voice-overs are the modern equivalent of chain-rattling and ghostly moans.

Rule 3: Ordinary things in extraordinary circumstances can be very scary. The piles of rocks in “Blair Witch” were much more unsettling than, say, a computer-generated ghoul would have been. For some reason, the sudden appearance of antique personal items--the lockets and watches that fall through the ceiling in “Poltergeist,” and the cache of coins in “Session 9”--is very effective, making the dead seem real and present but also, well, dead. Likewise, old photos, although best when not found in cobweb-and cliche-filled attics.

Rule 4: Empty oversized rooms--hotel kitchens, hospital wards, public libraries, empty schools--produce anxiety almost instantly and offer great clatter/weird echo potential. Rooms filled with sheet-shrouded furniture, however, just look silly, no matter what the soundtrack is up to.

Rule 5: Go easy on the long shots down dim corridors, basement stairways, underground tunnels, empty bedrooms or shadowy windows. Too much of this, and the viewer starts looking for the real estate agent. Also avoid banal dialogue of the “gee, a real-fixer-upper, heh, heh, heh” variety when the old house/hospital/factory looms into frame.

In fact, avoid that nervous “heh, heh, heh” altogether.

Rule 6: Children are spookier than adults. Particularly dead children--but only when they’re long dead. Dead children that bear any resemblance to those known by audience members are just upsetting, although “The Sixth Sense” handled it pretty well. Killing a child during the modern-time movie is almost always a bad idea. Babies, especially, must be handled with care--the sound of an infant crying in an empty room through the centuries is very scary; the sound of an infant crying at the approach of a real-time serial killer is just horrible.

Rule 7: Blood and gore all over the floor takes a film out of the ranks of horror and into slasher land, losing most of the adult audience. Hint: Whenever the carpet knife/scythe/meat hook makes its appearance, things are looking rocky. What actually happens is almost always less frightening than what the characters/audience think might happen. That’s the whole point.

Rule 8: No more animate toys. Instead, let’s bring back the menacing painting. It worked so well in “Dorian Gray,” “Rebecca” and “The Uninvited.” Also, between “What Lies Beneath” and “The Gift,” I think we have had enough haunted bathtubs for a while, and ghosts of drowned girls. I take that back. We can never have enough ghosts of drowned girls. They have such great hair.

Rule 9: One evil and/or occult force is usually more than enough. “The Frighteners” failed because there were too many supernatural things going on--ghosts should either be funny or evil; it’s hard to do both. “The Others” also got bogged down when Dad showed up, looking very much the worse for wear and almost giving the whole conceit away. What was he doing there anyway? Why could he leave his special place and other ghosts could not? Actually, any evocation of the rule book of the spirit world is best left to comedies, like “Beetlejuice.” Unless part of the plot is decoding it. Also, ghostly behavior should be consistent--can they walk through walls or can’t they?

Rule 10: The writer and/or director must know what is going on. Is the force behind the evil a real ghost or merely the tortured psyche of the main character? Some films can never decide. It does not have to be spelled out for us--there’s nothing wrong with a “Turn of the Screw”-type ending. But certainly Henry James knew what really happened, and so should every filmmaker.