Page 210 - Student: dazed And Confused

so firmly rooted in reality stretched to the limit that nothing really seems out of the
ordinary.

'... while Jack is still manipulated by the hotel, there's a much
stronger sense that it could simply be happening because of
cabin fever - a very human, and thus more terrifying, affliction.'
(SFX magazine, 2009,
p82)

Maybe The Shining is horror at its best because it does not ask viewers to move their

mindset to a whole new dimension but plays within the boundaries of the world we all live
in. The assumption that the derangement Jack experiences could never really happen is

blown away by the fact that, at least in the imagination, it did. The world of the Overlook

Hotel is a micro universe inside our macro one. In much the same way the cabin in the
woods in Stormed is in a bubble inside the normal world. It was always going to be a leap of

faith that people would go along with the notion that wolves were stalking the woods. If

this was just a house on a random street, no-one would watch but because the cabin is so

far from society we can accept that the normal bounds of reality no longer apply.

Perhaps the point of a horror film is not just to horrify people as I first suggested. Maybe it

is to show us how horrible people can be to one another; to question whether the depths of

our own imaginations are far worse than any film; to show that going into the woods is very
bad idea because 'what the monster does when it catches you in the deep wood is eat you.'

(King,1986, p1080). The horror film is under obligation to provide edge-of-the-seat viewing

and by looking at the use of visual and sound effects along with solid characters and world I

hope to have shown a little of the hard work that goes into a good horror. What I learned
from watching Psycho, The Exorcist, The Blair Witch Project and The Shining I tried to

incorporate into the writing of Stormed. It is important to watch and read films that have

done so well in the genre and utilise that to write something imaginative and unique rather

than a sequel, spin-off, imitator or generic gorefest.

A film is entertainment and if it happens to evoke thrills and chills then surely it has gone
beyond its base requirement. Scream hit upon a horror-light format that works and has

been used in various guises over the years - but they are basically the same and Stormed