A masterclass in fear
Last night I watched The Exorcist again. Earlier in the week,
I'd spotted its screening on Friday 13th, only to spend
several days worrying about whether I really would be brave enough
to see it and, if I did, what would be its impact upon my peace of
mind and ability to sleep at nights.
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The Exorcist was one of the defining films of my youth, possibly
of the 20th century. I remember to this day the buzz in
the playground as those kids with siblings old enough to sneak into
the back of cinemas described scenes and quotes. You all know the
ones I'm thinking of: rotating head, defiled statue, antics with
the crucifix. And what twelve year old could ever forget the line:
"Your mother sucks xxxxx in hell." I'll wager people who have never
even seen the film will know of these scenes, will have heard the
more famous lines before. Which is remarkable in itself. How many
films from over 30 years ago remain so entirely threaded in the
public consciousness?
With this in mind, I was determined at least to try and watch
it. I needed to see, with mature eyes, what the fuss was really all
about. Is The Exorcist a "superb horror", as the TV guide
described, and a groundbreaking piece of cinematic history. Or
would it be a massive disappointment like many other so-called
iconic horror films (I laughed my way through The Wicker Man),
memorable only in its capacity to shock?
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The other reason I wanted to see it again was that those of us
who make our living from scaring others need continually to be
re-honing our skills. A sort of continuous professional development
for writers, if you like. If The Exorcist is one of the scariest
films ever, what makes it so? What tricks does it contain that
scribblers like me can learn from, adapt and use again.
Well, the first thing that struck me, watching the film with
fresh eyes, is -for most of its duration - its complete
ordinariness. This is a story of regular folks. OK, the main
character is a famous actress but her primary role in the film is
that of a perfectly ordinary mum. The film kicks off on an
archealogical dig in the middle east. Some odd artefacts are found,
it's a bit atmospheric, but nothing to get worked up about. Then we
move to Washington and to a mother and 12 year old daughter
enjoying family life. It's familiar, a little saccharine perhaps,
almost verging on dull. And so it goes on.
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Until that first, tiny clue that the status quo is about to
swing. When Mum wakes up one night to find her daughter in the bed
alongside her. 'What are you doing here?' She asks. 'Couldn't
sleep, Mummy,' Regan replies. 'The bed was shaking.'
Mum dismisses this as a bad dream or an over-active imagination.
But we know it's neither. We know it's the beginning.
Mr B and I made it to the flesh-slashing, vomit-hurling,
head-rotating end and were in complete agreement that The Exorcist
is worthy of its reputation. It is a superbly crafted film,
seriously scary and genuinely groundbreaking. And it has a
huge amount to teach people like me whose job it is to scare
others:
1. The power of the ordinary. If you fill your story with normal
folks, giving them a life that seems entirely familiar and then
shift the perspective, just a little, you've got a potentially very
scary scenario, because when you take away one little foundation
brick, what's to stop the whole pack of cards from tumbling
down?
2. Playing to your audience's fears. Some fears are universal
and for most adults, the greatest is of something terrible
happening to a child we love. For all its gimics and special
effects, The Exorcist is the story of a mother who faces losing her
only child to a "disease" she cannot begin to understand.
3. Setting expectations. I'm convinced that one of the reasons
The Exorcist scares the living daylights out of us is that we
expect it to do so. I was on edge from the opening credits, knowing
that some pretty heavy stuff was coming, and not being entirely
sure when. The lesson for thriller writers has to be to let readers
know from the outset that they are going to be scared.
4. Not overplaying your hand. Some of the scariest scenes in The
Exorcist are not the famous vomit-laden ones, but the quieter
moments: like when a young girl's eyes turn empty, and she laughs
with a voice that is not her own.
5. Cutting off escape routes. The mother, in The Exorcist,
cannot run. Her daughter is her life. She is trapped by a
relationship, by the power of the mother/child bond, and as we see
her options disappearing we can only share her sense of iscolation
and entrapment.
6. Using shock tactics sparingly. There are some exceptionally
shocking scenes in The Exorcist but, taken as a whole, they don't
give the impression of a film using shock tactics gratuitously
because they are balanced by the humanity of the rest of the film.
The love, faith and courage shown by the mother and the two priests
is enough to counter the graphic sexual violence that would
otherwise drive people to turn the TV off.
I went to bed last night with a great deal to think about.
This morning, our young son joined us in our bed with the story
of how something strange had happened to him in the night. His
wrist-watch, that he'd been wearing when he went to sleep, fell on
his face in the night and woke him up. And so it begins ...
