Where is the demarcation line between suspense and horror?

Question

Is it the amount of fear generated in the audience? The tawdriness of the gore?Havng any gore at all?thanks for any thoughts,tracy

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[nq:1]Is it the amount of fear generated in the audience? The tawdriness of the gore? Havng any gore at all? thanks for any thoughts, tracy[/nq]
For me it is that horror contains the spirit of evil within the antagonist. The idea is there that whatever the antagonist is doing it is gaining immense pleasure from doing so.
I also like the Mckee line that it is not enough for the protagonist to fear that it might die (here the dominant emotion is merely fear which is what the thriller genre deals with, and most suspense is dealt with in the thriller genre).
In horror the dominant demotion is terror - so we have to force the protagonist into a position where they would beg for death.

My sixpenny'th
Richard

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Is it the amount of fear generated in the audience? The tawdriness of the gore? Havng any gore at all? thanks for any thoughts,[/nq]
My thoughts.
A good horror movie has suspense. A bad horror movie doesn't.

A good horror movie has characters you care about. A bad horror movie has human "blood balloons" you never meet.
A good horror movie builds the suspense (a sense of dread). A bad horror movie tries to rely on shock value.
Good horror movie example: Pitch Black
1) We meet the characters.
2) We find out about nasty things that come out in the dark.
3) It's getting dark.

Bad horror movie example: Almost every idea by Jesse
1) Someone we don't know is walking down the street.
2) Suddenly something rips his head off.

Paulo Joe Jingy

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[nq:1]Is it the amount of fear generated in the audience? The tawdriness of the gore? Havng any gore at all? thanks for any thoughts,[/nq]
Lots of suspense has some horror in it, and I think all good horror has suspense in it.
I consider THE BAD SEED, PLAY MISTY FOR ME, and FATAL ATTRACTION all horror, though there's limited blood in each of those movies. And movies like KILL BILL have loads of gore and blood, but aren't horror.
ALIEN has a monster and is horror. ALIENS has a similar monster and isn't horror (though it certainly has horror elements).

So it definitely isn't a blood and gore quotient, or even a monster quotient, that makes something horror.
IN COLD BLOOD and HELTER SKELTER are both horrific, but are they horror? Well, I guess it depends on how each effects you personally.
I've heard some people describe the difference between the two as simply a difference in attitude. They believe it's the way the subject matter is handled and presented. Maybe it's partly that, but I think its something else much more.

I personally think the main difference between suspense and horror is the controllability of the antagonist. Not the lack of control that the protagonist has, but how potentially controllable is the antagonist.
THE BAD SEED, PLAY MISTY FOR ME, and FATAL ATTRACTION all have crazy females that NOBODY is going to control. JAWS seems uncontrollable. The ALIEN seems uncontrollable. Dracula is pretty unstoppable, and no werewolf can even control himself. If it is presented in a serious manner, and we as the audience cannot imagine a controllable scenario, I believe it becomes horror.

SUSPENSE: Economic ruin, over-population, runaway government. (All potentially controllable. We can think of escape hatches.)

HORROR: A smallpox epidemic, nuclear winter, terrorists with anthrax. (Not very controllable and not a lot of escape hatches.)

And the more daunting, overpowering and superior the antagonist is, the greater the horror. That's why supernatural antagonists are so popular in horror. How the heck do you control something that's supernatural??? The girl in THE BAD SEED is scary and it is horror, but little Damien in THE OMEN is supernatural and it is HORROR!

Absolutely, presentation and attitude are important to achieving true horror in writing and movies, but I believe the huge underlying factor that makes or breaks horror is a matter of CONTROL.

But just my opinion.
Dean "Who-Has-Little-Control-Over-His-Own-Life" Hart

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[nq:1]Is it the amount of fear generated in the audience? The tawdriness of the gore? Havng any gore at all? thanks for any thoughts,[/nq]
I don't know is "Suspense" is really a genre. While suspense is a specific condition of the audience during a specific situation (when they know more than the character, and are dreading a specific outcome based on that knowledge, e.g., "Don't open that door there's a killer behind it!") and there are certainly movies that have a lot of suspense in them, I think most "suspenseful" movies are, genre-wise, either horror films, thrillers, or action movies.
-Ron

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Supernatural elements.
Now, before you start saying "What about FRIDAY THE 13th and HALLOWEEN?" I think you should check out both flicks - in F13, Jason is dead when the movie starts. (yes, I know there's a twist ending in the first film, but in subsequent films - Jason is the killer and he's dead). In H, Mike is described as being "pure evil" and no matter how many times you shoot him, stab, him, kill him, he gets up and walks away. He ain't human.
Though SILENCE OF THE LAMBS gets shelved someplaces as horror, the novel is in with the thrillers in Mystery Fiction, rather than on the horror shelves with Stephen King. The movie is really not much different than DIRTY HARRY - cop chases psycho.
There are plenty of horror films with no gore at all - check out the amazing original version of THE HAUNTING or modern flicks like THE OTHERS.
And here's the suspense vs. dread thing: Suspense is usually anticipation of a known* event, Dread is the anticipation of an *unknown event.
A suspense scene may be that Hitchcock example of the man breaking into an apartment and searching for clues... while we see the guy who lives in the apartment park his car in the building's garage, enter the building and climb the stairs to his apartment. We know the apartment guy is on his way, and that creates suspense.
A dread scene may be that old cliche of the teenagers going into the haunted house where legend has it, the headless ghost steals the souls of all who enter. Once inside the house, the place is shadows and more shadows... the headless ghost might be anywhere. We don't know where he'll come from or when - and that's dread. It's anticipation of the unknown.
I have a class on audio CD about horror, and a 2 parter on Thrillers (and suspense scenes), this stuff is covered there.

- Bill
Free Script Tips:
http://www.scriptsecrets.net

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@reader1.panix.com:
[nq:1]Is it the amount of fear generated in the audience? The tawdriness of the gore? Havng any gore at all?[/nq]
They're different. That's like asking the difference between comedy and action.
Horror scares the audience; suspense raises tension and sustains it by keeping the audience on the edge of its seat. When both effects arer used in a movie effectively, you could say that moments of suspense are followed by moments of horror.
jaybee

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[nq:1]Is it the amount of fear generated in the audience? The tawdrinessof the gore? Havng any gore at all? thanks for any thoughts, tracy[/nq]
To me, the suggestion of a "line of demarcation" is completely wrong because it suggests a continuum between suspense and horror as if you start with something merely suspenseful, then somehow amp up some element of it, and by doing so, up with horror.
I don't think that that's so.
While suspense may figure in horror movies to some degree, I believe that they are fundamentally different animals.
Suspense and generating suspense requires knowledge. Specifically, it requires the audience to have knowledge of the danger that the characters in the movie face.
So when you think of a classic "suspense" movie something like "Wait Until Dark" comes to mind where Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman is menaced by some real nasty characters and you have, for instance, a scene where she's in her apartment and one of the nasties is there and obviously, she can't see him, and doesn't know exactly where he is but we* do and the issue hinges on how this woman, who can't see this danger of which *we have complete knowledge is going to escape or triumph.
Suspense requires those certain key elements we know about the danger there is urgency someone who does know about it is, in some fashion or other, prevented from acting in a timely manner from stopping it even as he struggles harder and harder to do so as the clock ticks down and the danger progressively increases.

That's what makes a suspense* scene and if those are the scenes the *set pieces that dominate a movie then it's a suspense film although, for marketing reasons, those films (and horror films as well) have both been subsumed into the larger category of "thriller."

But a horror film, to my mind, is completely different. With suspense, the issue is always one of "will it happen?" "will Whomever be able to stop it from happening?" and how long can that state of uncertainty be drawn out? And, as Hitchcock expressed most clearly if you draw out scenes like that if you let the bomb tick down until it's one second to zero you can never let it go off. At least you can't do that without royally ******* off your audience.

Horror, on the other hand, is not about creating a sense of uncertainty will the bomb go off, or will the person buried alive be found in time nor is it about shock or "boo" moments, nor about gore but rather about creating a sense of dread.
That happens when barriers that we normally consider to be inviolate are suddenly penetrated or crossed. When those things in which we have the most trust, or that we most love our families, our children, our homes, our communities, our faiths, our own bodies or minds even reality itself when those things are suddenly attacked or revealed to be other than we have always believed them to be that (at least if it is done well) can create a profound sense of dread the sense that what we have always trusted may not be so trustworthy that what we have always deemed to be safe, may not be quite so safe.

The best horror, I think, is about the confrontation with the unknown it leaves us with no easy answers.
If suspense is about taking us up to one second before the bomb goes off and then saving us horror takes us into the dark and leaves us there.
NMS

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Q:Horror scares the audience; suspense raises tension and sustains it by Q:keeping the audience on the edge of its seat. When both effects arer used Q:in a movie effectively, you could say that moments of suspense are followed Q:by moments of horror.
Q:
Here's a movie example of horror and suspense: In WAIT UNTIL DARK suspense was after Audrey "Susie" Hepburn thinks she's killed Alan "Harry" Arkin and she's frantically feeling along in the dark. Horror is when Harry suddenly jumps up and grabs her. Hey, it scared me so bad I burst out crying.

The Peripatetic Samurai Robot!

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Is it the amount of fear generated in the audience? The tawdriness of the gore? Havng any gore at all? thanks for any thoughts, tracy[/nq]
If someone bleeds copiously or is eaten or chopped, it's horror. If people are in a state of suspense without supernatural elements, it's suspense.
If there are supernatural elements and no suspense, it't 1999's The Haunting.

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[nq:1]Supernatural elements. Now, before you start saying "What about FRIDAY THE 13th and HALLOWEEN?" I think you should check out ... the horror shelves with Stephen King. The movie is really not much different than DIRTY HARRY - cop chases psycho.[/nq]
It's important to remember that when a genre matures, it's identifiable story elements can become a style which other genres use. It happens very regularly with highly stylized genres: film noir, horror (Silence of the Lambs was a very noticable "first" to use elements of horror). It's a pretty regular process in most arts, I think...

Mysti

Where is the demarcation line between suspense and horror?

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