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"

Another Dead Teenager Movie?

While working on my outline for my new script I got to thinking about what sort of people I was going to throw in the way of the killer. Were they merely fodder for gore and violence, or should there be something more to them? Does being able to relate and connect to a likable character make the movie scarier... or sadder?

It's a fine line to walk, between being empathetic for a character and merely liking them. The more you can relate to a character, going beyond just the surface, the more you're going to feel the sting when the character ultimately bites it. There is a problem with going this route though, if you start to have people connect with all your characters, how are they going to react when you start killing them off? Odds are that the people that connect most with the characters that survive till the end (or close to it) are going to have a more enjoyable experience than those that connected with the character that got killed off first.

Here's an example: In Friday the 13th Part 3 there is the character of Shelly played by Larry Zerner. Shelly was kind of dumpy with a bad hairdo but a very empathetic character. He wasn't as attractive as the rest of the people and was kind of uncomfortable with himself as well as around strangers so he resorted to silly tricks to get people to pay attention to him. This was a well developed character because we could all relate to being in that sort of situation. Well, I know a few people that can't and I hate them, but the majority of people can relate to feeling that way. This gave Shelly some depth, and we were rooting for him through the course of the movie to come to terms with who he was and become a better person... and ultimately to do it with that cute Spanish girl before Jason killed everybody.

Unfortunately Shelly was killed off without much fanfare. He wandered into the barn in his wetsuit and was not seen again until towards the end of the movie where apparently he was wandering around with his throat slit for the past couple of house. I felt cheated. Shelly didn't have a chance to change as a person or score, he had such build up and I ultimately was let down without even a gruesome death scene. After he was gone I was ready for the rest of the characters to get it and the movie to end, the only person I cared about was gone anyway.

So here's the problem I'm having: do I develop all the characters, some of the characters, one of the characters... or none? If I develop all of them then the movie will be very long and more of a soap opera than a slasher flick. If I develop some of the characters, will the other characters seem silly in comparison? If I develop one character, how I can ensure that it's the character that the majority of people will relate to? If I decide to kill them off, will the audience lose interest in what happens to the rest of the characters? I know that developing none is a bad idea, it would be the equivalent of watching a snuff film... or Hostel.

I think my best bet will be the develop all of the characters in the script, but in different ways. Giving them their own agendas will help not only to develop them but to differentiate them from the rest. Thus far I've written down their names and given them all a little biography and by doing that I've also set myself up to look at their individual goals and personal relationships. I don't want to create a character like Ben-Hur but I don't want to set up the disappointment of Shelly. It's going to be a very fine line to walk.

The Slasher

So I was talking with my friend Jesse last night, who has a friend Peter that might possibly be getting some movie equipment with an inheritance he received. Since I'm the only writer they like (or know I guess) I've been asked to start kicking around some ideas for a cheap horror movie. I mean really cheap. I have no idea if anything is going to materialize but it's nice to have a new idea regardless, so I sat down last night and started thinking about the different types of cheap horror movies. There was one resounding sub-genre that came to mind, the quintessential cheap horror movie: the slasher flick.

The problem with the slasher genre is that it's been done to death. Psycho started it all way back in 1960 and it's evolved from there. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Silent Night, Deadly Night, Child's Play, Scream... and a million little ones that I'm not listing. They have spawned such iconic figures as Leatherface, Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, Freedy Krueger, Chucky and some less than memorable ones such as the people from those other movies.

What makes a memorable villain? Out of the four I listed, two don't talk, one grunts and the other two make wisecracks. I can strike Chucky off the list immediately as after the first Child's Play they all stunk. Freddy Krueger stopped being scary after the second film as he then became more of a humorist than a villain. Leatherface is Leatherface, there's not much to him, it's more the family atmosphere that made him an iconic figure. Jason Vorhees didn't appear until the second Friday film and evolved into a supernatural being of unlimited regenerative power with a phobia of water for some reason, then got very silly towards the end (though was redeemed in Freddy vs. Jason). Michael Myers, presumably just a regular guy (so was Leatherface) was very scary, in my opinion, simply because he was just a regular guy... so far gone mentally that pain was negligible. Now that's creepy. Of course the latter Halloween films, from three onward, were just damn goofy, but the first two were fantastic.

So what do all of these killers have in common? They kill people. Aside from that, they're all very different, yet all memorable. So they obviously all have human origins and the sequels all went off in weird directions, but let's for the analysis' sake just look at the first films in the series (and Friday the 13th, Part 2. Mrs. Vorhees can take a powder as when she was a "hey surprise" in the film, not even introduced until the last fifteen minutes). Supernatural origins, such as Chucky and Freddy are immediately out. With the boon of supernatural horror in the last ten years it's best to stick to more mundane origins (yes I know, Jason aged at the bottom of a lake, but let's pretend he's some guy with a fetish for burlap). Leatherface was a result of him family, so he's out as well since I plan to stick mainly to killer and victims... plus a family needs a house so that's an extra location, so that's an extra strike. So we're left with Jason and Michael Myers.

Between Jason and Michael Myers, I'm leaning slightly towards Michael Myers if only because you knew his origins. There was even Dr. Loomis popping in and our making cryptic statements about the blackness of the soul and whatnot, Jason was on his own with no one touting his scariness. Even so, that caused Jason to have the element of surprise on his side as no one knew he was there at all.

Time to back it up a bit. I don't want this to completely devolve into who my favorite movie killer is, it's about the development of my own slasher. So I'm going to make a list of questions that need to be answered to really develop a true slasher genre villain. Here goes:

Origins: Known or unknown? (if known, by the audience or by someone in the film?)
Strength: Human or unstoppable? (if human, how do we know they are human?)
Victims: Known to him or random? (if known to him, will there be a time they meet or only an assumed time?)
Motives: Known or unknown? (regardless of Victims answer)
Face: Masked, in the shadows, completely hidden, or seen? (if completely hidden, first person perspective (done to death!))
Weapon: Found, carried or none?
Clothes: Normal, rags, found or stolen?
Ending: Definite or open?
Base of Operations: Woods, suburbs, urban, beach, house or other?
Victims: Hidden or displayed? (Does he create fright with bodies or make people say, "Hey, where's Molly?)
Future Victims: Knowing or ignorant? (this is dependent on the victims answer)
Name: Known or unknown? (Can be approached that origins are known but name is unknown or vice-versa)

I'm sure there are more that will come to me, but these are the questions I think I will answer for the time being over the course of this week. It's like Mad Libs: Killers. These can be answered so many different ways with a lot of combinations, so it would be easy to make several different killers and see which one you particularly like.

One I have my questions answered and I'm really happy with them I'll then start crafting an outline of the killer based around the answers and see what I come up with from there. Hopefully I'll be able to craft a unique and memorable killer that avoids the major cliches. Still, a little cliche is fun in the slasher genre.

Up Next: "The Victims: Who are they and why do I care?"