Fifty Horror Clichés That Need to Die in a Fire

#9: The Horror Ends Eventually

  A surprising fact about the majority of horror novels is that in the end of almost all plot lines, the heroes actually manages to best the murderer or evil entity.  Despite the rest of the book being filled to the brim with hopeless horrific imagery, a horror novel usually ends up turning to a more positive light after the final boss battle or whatever else stops the evil entity for the time being.  It is an example of the happily ever after trope found in most other genres of writing.  No matter what the circumstances are, the hero ends up going on top.  Even if the killer does come back for vengeance in the near future, at the book's end everything is peaceful. 

  Almost all iconic horror novels sport this trend.  In The Shining, although Jack Torrance is destroyed by the chaos of the Overlook Hotel, his beautiful wife Wendy and his psychic son Danny end up surviving the ordeal.  They put their lives back together in Florida where former Overlook Hotel cook Dick Hallorann looks out for both of them for the rest of the time he remains alive.  The ending of The Death Note manga does this too in a bittersweet degree, where Light Yagami ends up paying for his cruelty at the hands of L's successor Near.  The Kira Case gets solved and the remaining members of the Kira Task Force are allowed to return to their normal lives after many agonizing years of searching for the notorious killer.  Even the original Dracula book ends up with a good resolution where the vampire is taken out by the main cast of humans.  In most horror media, the ending is going to be positive no matter what chaos comes before it.

  Now this in itself is not always a terrible thing.  Having a positive takeaway from a horror novel can work as long as it makes sense in the context of the plot.  In all three examples above, that is exactly what occurred.  By mixing all of the plot's elements down skillfully, all three stories' endings still make complete sense with the intended dark, creepy atmosphere.  The light at the end of the tunnel was well executed, making this trope work in each storyline.  Although this takeaway is extremely common, if done right, you can still get amazing results.

  A majority of the time though, this execution ends up becoming cliché for being too darn predictable.  Less readers are willing to finish a horror story if they know the characters are all going to make it in the end and brush off everything as if it never happened.  They are completely robbed in these cases of a well executed ending and even in some cases the entire storyline.  This is exactly the reason why most horror films and books in modern times fail so miserably.  By going for the ending every other writer has done a million times over, the material feels completely repetitive.  The 2018 film The Nun does just that, creating a plot line about an evil church nun that has been done a million times before, especially with the final twenty minutes of the film.  Saying the same character was scarier in The Conjuring 2 is not an understatement at all.  A repetitive positive ending in anything horror genre related is not going to leave that much of a huge impact on anyone.

  However, excluding the happily ever after in horror stories does work effectively for most stories.  In these examples, the protagonist does not escape the horror that has been attacking them for the entire story.  They go on living with the terror forever or die in a vicious way.  Horror stories formatted this way have a much better effect on the audience as a whole.  Expecting things to end up going well for the characters in the end, they are completely surprised by the negative sendoff.  This type of ending achieves one of the core elements that make a horror story memorable; a chilling lasting impact.  The goal of horror stories besides scaring the audience is to leave them with terror even as the story ends.  It is an effective tool that ends up turning an average storyline into something more people will talk about.  One of my favorite Stephen King novels Pet Sematary executes the dark ending with accurate efficiency.  Protagonist Louis Creed ends up falling victim to all of the horrors the demonic location of the Pet Sematary has given him and the entirety of his family.  He falls into insanity from grief, bringing first his deceased infant son Gage and then his deceased wife Rachel back in a chaotic demonic state of being.  No one wins in the end of the story, leaving readers with a chill up their spine even after the second or third time reading the story.  It succeeds in being a genuinely scary novel that to this day has still left me with an impact almost no other horror story has given me in the past.  It is examples like Pet Sematary that has made me believe darker endings to be a strong element in horror novel writing.

  Never making the horror truly end for the reader is a solution with imaginative yet compelling results.  With this tactic, the possibilities are endless on how to terrify the audience next.  Not all stories have to end with the horrors completely going away.  They can keep the terror going with strong writing and a strong ambition on the author's part to make the story truly memorable. 

  Just be cautious about not doing this with every single story you write though.  Doing this causes the opposite reaction to occur with the material becoming completely predictable.  Once in a while, you should make the ending bittersweet or positive just to create more diversity in your writing.  Dark endings are not always the answer, despite their compelling traits.