Get to the Killing Already!

As I work on my outline I've had one question in particular that has been really bothering me: How long before the killing starts?

How long can I develop my characters before I start to bore my audience? In order to create a bond between the average moviegoer and the characters in the story I have to have a certain amount of development. There has to be something to latch onto and in order to do that I need a little bit of time. If I wanted one-dimensional throwaway characters there would be no problem, in fact I could have a group of thirty people, kill one every three minutes and there is a feature length film... but that's not what I want.

The flaw in the majority of horror films is that the characters are entirely one-dimensional. They are a means to an end, which in the case of a horror movie is to up the body count. They have one small purpose to their character, with no reason why, no back story, no change, no conflict and their lives end with little to no emotional impact on the audience. For a good example of what I mean let's look at Annie and Lynda (Nancy Kyes and P.J. Soles), Laurie Strode's friends from the movie Halloween. They're typical teenage girls, saying typical teenage things and they expressly want to get laid that night. Next thing you know, they're dead.

That's it. Who cares? I know they're Laurie's friends and all but honestly, all they wanted to do was get laid and now they're dead. These things happen. Laurie on the other hand loves her parents, works hard in school, is a babysitter, is a comforting figure, has a crush on a boy... so on and so forth. I feel like I know Laurie Strode, I feel like I care about her and when her friends get killed it's not them I feel emotion for but Laurie... I worry that something might happen to poor Laurie. She's got a lot going on and so much to live for, she can't get killed now!

The trick to having a good, well developed character that people care about is giving them a back story, internal as well as external conflicts, goals and, more or less, a life outside of the scope of the film. They have to be real people that we're watching for the course of the story... what they did before we're aware of but not explicitly told and what they're doing after is dependent on their transformation through the story. Laurie Strode, unfortunately, did not change as a character... she didn't have a chance to, the movie just kind of ended as it is with horror movies. Halloween II picked up immediately where Halloween left off and introduced a whole new batch of forgettable characters, such as the nurse, who could have been walking around saying, "I'm a nurse... I'm a nurse... I'm a nurse" and had roughly the same impact. Laurie Strode did change eventually though, she went from victim to killer in Halloween: H20. It may have taken twenty years but she finally confronted her demons and made a real character change after which she could really move on and continue changing her life.

Larry Zerner e-mailed me last week, amazingly enough, and said something regarding horror movie characters that struck me as both funny and true, "In Friday the 13th Part 3, all the characters were three-dimensional (if you wore the glasses)." Replace "Friday the 13th Part 3" with just about any horror movie and it applies, there just isn't any character development. Laurie Strode was one of the few examples of a three-dimensional character but she lacked that final crisis decision to solidify change and instead let Dr. Loomis pull the trigger (she could have grabbed the gun or something, work with me here).

I've digressed a bit into the last topic but it applies to the question at hand. Can a three dimensional character be fully developed in the time before all the killing starts? The Halloween example proves that yes, it is possible and if the movie is constructed right it should play out completely by the end. How much time then should be devoted to this? Also, what about all the other characters? Should they just be killed fodder and have no real purpose except to be there?

The answer, in my opinion, is no. The problem then arises of how long until the killing starts? I've informally polled twenty people at work and got their thoughts on how long they're willing to wait before someone gets it. The median answer was a half hour. A few other answers were, "horror movies are retarded," "the opening credits," "all at once," and "who are you?" So, a half hour or so is as long as the majority of people will watch character development before someone has to die. I suppose I agree with this, but if done right, the time before the killing should be interesting and engaging.

If the characters develop well, have their own interesting plot lines and intriguing interpersonal relationships, the viewer may not even notice the time devoted... then again they did buy their ticket and sit down to see some hapless folks get killed. So it remains a double edged sword, try to develop the characters and have the audience connect, but don't drag it out so long that they get bored and want them to die anyway.

One movie in particular I know of that I was really getting antsy for the killing was Hostel. The first hour or so was porno, the rest was gross-out horror. Needless to say I was bored out of my mind for the first hour mainly because I didn't care about the characters. They weren't very deep and I was kind of disappointed that Paxton (Jay Hernandez) survived. Good luck playing the piano, chump!

Regardless, careful planning must be done to ensure I get these characters right and that my audience doesn't start to lose interest. Engaging characters, interesting subplots, complex relationships, the whole gamut, must be explored in thirty minutes because right around then this goes from character piece to "Hey, where's Barry?"

Still, I think I'm on the right track. I have one outline written but while writing this entry a few ideas came to me (I guess writing this actually DOES help) so a new outline must be written. I'm on the right path!

Next time... "Killing Your Characters: Gorefest, Quick and Easy or The Cutaway"