Fifty Horror Clichés That Need to Die in a Fire

#24: A Lack of Suspense

  Note:  I would like to give a huge thanks to thatmarvelgirl321 for helping me choose this cliché as my main topic for this part.  Although they didn't choose a particular trope for me to handle, their suggestion to look over jump-scares once again made me remember something I had on the back burner for a while now.

When it comes to great horror movies and books, most will argue that a huge golden age for the genre occurred in the 1980's.  That was when many of the classics most people look back on today for inspiration were produced.  When it comes to the slew of horror movies released during the time, there were so many to choose from.  From adaptations of great horror novel material such as The Shining, the horror/comedy An American Werewolf in London, and slasher flicks like A Nightmare on Elm Street, the 1980's had a little bit of everything for those who loved a great horror movie experience.  It was additionally the age where many of Stephen King's classic books were produced, adding more kindling to the already horror genre abundant fire.  Books under the iconic author's name at the time included Firestarter, Cujo, Pet Sematary, Misery, Thinner, and It to just name a few.  Like rock music and other popular media, there seemed to be no other time to be alive than the 1980's.

  But, you might be asking, why were the horror related material released at that time deemed as particularly special?  After all, even after the 1980's were over, many horror related material still was quite popular and continued to evolve with the changing of the times.  Why at this time were horror movies and books considered to be at their peak by many individuals?  Surprisingly, the answer is actually quite simple.  Horror related media at the time had a special trait attached to them that many modern horror stories have seemed to neglect.  That trait was the tonal suspense many of these stories included into the overall narrative, making something simple in execution turn into an audience pleasing masterpiece.

  A great example of this tonal suspense can be found in the 1981 movie An American Werewolf in London.  What makes the movie scary to many people is not the werewolf our main character David Kessler becomes, the fair amount of gore displayed, or seeing Jack Goodman slowly decompose in his zombie-like state.  It is the inevitability that David will become the beast again, and the lack of knowledge in knowing when the werewolf hidden in the shadows will strike at an innocent civilian. 

  The film does a great job building up the transformation David will go through on the first and second day of the full moon, giving the audience early knowledge of what David will ultimately become, but not the character himself.  Until the first full moon, David frustratingly remains ignorant of the beast slowly building up inside of him, despite being told constantly by the zombie-ghost of his friend Jack that the killed werewolf's bloodline had continued inside of him.  Instead, he brushes off each warning as grief-related hallucinations and finds himself further invested in the romance he is having with his former nurse Alex Price.  Worse, the only people who could have told David what was going on besides Jack at The Slaughtered Lamb falsely reported to police that the werewolf in question was an escaped lunatic.  Because of this, the audience is left helpless watching the inevitable transformations come and destroy the innocence that David tried so hard all of his life to preserve, going on two separate blood soaked rampages.

  Then there is the way the filmmakers handled using the scenes with the transformed David.  Instead of showing up-close shots of the werewolf rampaging through London's streets, the creature for the most part is hidden in the shadows.  We instead see through the perspectives of the victims, unaware that a bloodthirsty werewolf is about to attack them until too late.  The methodology of this choice by the filmmakers is similar to how the movie Jaws handled its titular shark.  We see only the fin of the shark whenever it randomly strikes, only saving the full reveal until the climatic end of the film.  The tonal suspense keeps the audience completely on edge, making a random attack much more scary due to the unpredictability.

  Tonal suspense was the bread and butter of many horror stories in the 1980's, leaving a memorable mark on the decade as a whole.  It did not matter what the audience was reading or watching.  The horror itself always had an aura of unpredictable nature that the modern jump-scare could only wish to accomplish.  Each story treated its audience with respect and tested their limits.  That is why so many iconic stories stem from this decade alone, and left a pretty big influence for the beginning of the 1990's.  However after that, for some weird reason the tonal suspense got completely abandoned.

  Possibly because of the changing of the times, writers started to feel that this method of delivering quality scares was becoming ineffective.  Nowadays, people are less willing in their eyes to tolerate waiting a certain amount of time in the narrative for the scares to start being delivered.  Because of this so-called impatience, ineffective, fast tropes such as the jump-scare were invented with the intention to keep the audience's focus on the story.  With this contagiously negative ideology being spread to other inspiring horror writers, tonal suspense was for the most part completely abandoned for more "commercially friendly" alternatives.

  To tell the truth, I find this modern truth to be quite tragic.  It seems a lot of writers have forgotten the power of a suspenseful tone and the idea of keeping the threat for the most part undetectable to the audience until needed for a stronger product.  For all of those inspiring writers wishing to become hopefully famous in the horror genre, I highly recommend looking at some examples of great stories from the past.  Study closely the techniques they effectively used to engage their audience, and expand on the tropes used back then to truly create strong modern horror material.  These patterns are a huge unknown key in creating something great that people will be scared of.