Poor Scriptwriting in Prometheus

I have previously written about a common problem in scriptwriting. A writer uses his characters to advance the plot in a certain direction, pushing them toward actions and decisions that contradict their intelligence and personalities. Characters become ignorant, stupid, or behave contrary to their nature.

In poor writing, characters are lifeless puppets to advance the plot. In good writing, characters advance the plot in ways that are consistent with their intelligence, emotions, and situations. Their actions are logically motivated.

In Prometheus (2012), Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green) is a scientist who travels to a distant moon (in another solar system), hoping to meet an alien race that, he believes, created humanity. When the spaceship carrying him arrives, Charlie rushes out with his team to explore, despite there only being six hours of daylight left. Charlie is too eager to wait for the next day.

Charlie finds a barren terrain and what appears to be "a tomb" (Charlie's word) with several dead aliens. Returning to the ship, Charlie becomes depressed and drunk. He refuses to attend the autopsy of an alien's head, because "I didn't come for an autopsy."

Is this a scientist speaking? This is humanity's first contact with an alien species, but Charlie prefers to sulk and ignore history in the making, because he's disappointed not to have met a live alien. His attitude is that of a child, not a scientist.

But it gets worse. Not only are Charlie's attitude and emotions poorly motivated, but he's not very intelligent for a scientist. There is no logical reason to believe that the alien race is dead.

1. The spaceship just arrived. They've been on the moon less than a day. The alien "tomb" was underground. Is it not logical to assume there might be other places on the moon where aliens are still alive? Perhaps underground? Imagine if an alien ship landed in the Sahara Desert, and immediately concluded the Earth was barren of all life. Not very bright, is it?

2. Even if the moon is barren, why assume the alien race is dead? Why assume this moon is their home world, the only place their civilization existed? On the contrary, Charlie already knows these aliens are a star-faring people. They came to Earth. Is it not logical to assume they'd be scattered among the stars? That this tiny moon was but a small outpost of their empire? That the reason they left maps on Earth directing us to this moon was, not because it was their most important world, but because it was their closest world to Earth?

And indeed, this is what the ship's captain (Idris Elba) concludes much later in the film. That this moon was but an outpost of the alien's civilization.

Well, duh! I figured that from the start. It sure took a while for these scientists to come around. Why were they so dense? It's not that I'm smarter. Real scientists would not have jumped to the conclusion of a "dead race" after less than a day on that moon. Well-written fictional scientists would likewise not have been so quick to make such blatantly false assumptions.

But writers Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof wanted to inject some drama into their story. And also extend the story to feature film length. So they dummied down their scientists, keeping the scientists stupid until they reached a turning point in the plot that required them to suddenly wise up.

A final observation. Because the alien race's intent is evil, Prometheus is horror, not science fiction. These aliens created humanity, taught us, invited us to visit them, then wanted to kill us. Horror.

Contrast this to a science fiction film such as 2001: A Space Odyssey. A similar setup. An alien race creates us (or at least guides our evolution), teaches us, and invites us to visit them. But their intent is apparently benevolent, albeit strange to our limited thinking. 

For further examples of poorly motivated characters, see my analyses of In Search of Lovecraft, and Deadly Messages, and Dark Floors.

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For more about the nature of horror, see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.

The Burrowers -- Western and Horror Morph Rather Than Mix

The “horror western” is a subgenre of the horror genre, not the Western. The horror western uses Western icons (e.g., Grim Prairie Tales), but its story conventions and atmosphere are horror. It is marketed toward -- and attracts -- horror fans, not Western fans.

Horror westerns normally mix these two genres from the start. We see the Western icons (the period locale, cowboys, Indians. etc.), but the story is soon, and clearly, horror.

The Burrowers is set in the Dakota Territories, 1879. But rather than blend the Western and horror genres, The Burrowers's strength is that it begins largely as an authentic Western. Only after the audience is emotionally adjusted to a Western does The Burrowers become a horror film.

The Burrowers opens on a romantic conversation, set on an idyllic Western ranch, a golden sunset in the background. Coffey with Maryanne, as they discuss how he will ask her father for her hand in marriage.

Minutes later, the first violent outbreak is typical of Westerns -- we hear gunfire outside the cabin. The family escapes to a cellar. They hear strange noises -- our first hint of an unnatural threat, as required by horror -- but we don't see any unnatural threats.

The family is killed. Maryanne is apparently kidnapped by Indians. (Audiences know it wasn't Indians -- but are lulled into believing that Maryanne may still be alive.)

For the next 44-45 minutes, The Burrowers is mostly a straight Western. Romantic photography, charging horses, beautiful prairie vistas -- supported by appropriate Western period music.

Psychologically, emotionally, dramatically, the characters are typically Western. The strong and silent Clay (very much a The Searchers, John Wayne type). The gentlemanly gunslinger Mr. Parcher. Coffey, the romantic Irish immigrant, riding to rescue Maryanne. Callaghan, the “noble Negro” (what Spike Lee calls the "magical Negro") -- compassionate, honorable, enduring racism without ever losing his dignity.

There is also an arrogant U.S. Cavalry officer, callous and cruel to both blacks and Indians. When he threatens to whip Coffey for “feeding my Indian,” the strong and silent Clay stares him down, ready for a gunfight, though outnumbered by the officers' troops.

Naturally, the officer backs down from the heroic Clay.

Throughout these first 44-45 minutes, there are intimations of horror -- the strange scars on a dead girl's neck; strange holes in the ground; something in the bushes that kills four troops. But overwhelmingly, The Burrowers's mise-en-scène, music, story, characters, and themes (loyalty toward loved ones and comrades; dignity in the face of adversity) are those of a Western.

The film emotionally conditions the audience for Western. Even if they know intellectually that they're watching a horror film, they feel like they're watching a Western. This conditions their expectations for a Western outcome. They anticipate (even if only subconsciously) that Coffey will rescue Maryanne. Most of the heroes will survive -- and if any should die, they will die noble, honorable, courageous deaths.

Yet as the film progresses, The Burrowers morphs from a Western into a horror film.

Midway into the film, Clay is killed. It's not an honorable death, but shocking and brutal. He dies not like John Wayne, giving a noble speech while heroically fading away, but is unceremoniously butchered like one of Leatherface's victims.

Clay's death is emotionally jarring. I regard this as the event that pushes the audience's mindset out of the Western genre, and into horror.

Things worsen. The monsters (vampiric “burrowers” living underground) reveal themselves. The unnatural threat becomes clear and visible.

The burrowers' bite poisons Parcher. As he fades over the course of the next day and night, he grows paranoid and cowardly. He shoots at his former comrades, lest they desert him.

In the end, he dies a coward's death. (His emotionally selfish state of mind is not unlike the cowardly jock in Jeepers Creepers 2 who wanted to abandon the weak ones, only to be killed himself.)

Callaghan likewise dies a senseless, ignoble death, the result of cowardice and incompetence. A victim of friendly fire, and an incompetent army surgeon (who perhaps callously amputated Callahan's leg, not much caring about a mere Negro's health). Callaghan, the “noble Negro,” dies like a piece of meat -- discarded like an anonymous victim in a slasher film.

Some friendly Indians die senseless deaths too, mistaken by the army as hostiles and executed. Much like Ben was mistaken for a zombie in Night of the Living Dead, and thus killed by a sheriff's posse. In horror films, innocents often die at the hands of incompetent authority figures.

Coffey fails to rescue Maryanne, or anyone else. He fails to bring proof of what he's learned about the burrowers. The army, by killing the friendly Indians, kills any hope of learning how to stop the burrowers. As in many horror films, the protagonists stymie, but do not destroy, the threat. Myers will return to kill again.



By starting as a straight Western (rather than a “horror western”), and only morphing into horror after the audience has been emotionally conditioned for a Western, The Burrowers solves a common horror film problem:
Horror requires an unnatural threat -- a sudden realization that (to quote from Frank Lupo's Werewolf pilot script) "The world is not as our minds believe."

The problem is that audiences get jaded after seeing so many horror films with the same unnatural threat -- be it a vampires, zombies, or uberpsychos. Familiarity breeds a sense of normalcy. Seeing them so often, we come to feel that they're commonplace, hence, natural.

As a result, horror filmmakers are challenged to find new ways to "creep out" audiences with a novel unnatural threat, some new threat that will overturn viewers' sense of reality.

Because most horror filmmakers can't rise to the challenge, they instead rely on gore and shocks (e.g., Devil's Grove).

The Burrowers solves this problem by starting as an authentic Western. Only after the audience is emotionally invested in a Western, with preconceived expectations of the characters' heroic deeds and successful fates, does the film emotionally jar them by segueing into a horror film -- when the characters are suddenly revealed to be cowardly and/or vulnerable.

Their deeds and deaths are typical for a horror film, but shocking to an audience that had forgotten they were watching a horror film.

Imagine High Noon if, during the last third, Gary Cooper suddenly turns cowardly, Grace Kelly is senselessly butchered like a piece of meat, and half the town massacres the other half in mindless mayhem.

The Burrowers demonstrates the emotional punch that comes of establishing one genre in the audience's mind, then defying their emotional expectations by morphing midway into another genre. A non-horror sensibility is established, into which any unnatural threat feels that much more unnatural.

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For more about horror's overlap with other genres see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.

Saturn Award Ignores Grassroots Horror for Studio Product

Every year, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films presents its annual Saturn Awards. The Academy claims that its goal is to recognize genre excellence.

The problem is, it doesn't even try to do so.

The Academy's genre definitions are so elastic, all manner of non-horror (and non-science fiction/non-fantasy) films qualify for Academy screenings and Saturn Awards.

Who or what is to blame? Among the prime culprits are studio publicists.

I wrote about this problem back in 1997. My article eventually saw print in 2001.

It's now available for free online at Communist Vampires.

Can One Distinguish I Spit On Your Grave from Death Wish?

I'm tired of all the remakes of 1970s and 1980s horror films. So many remakes over the last 15 years; most of them inferior or no better than the original.

But the recent release of the new I Spit On Your Grave raises another issue. This film played this past weekend at the Screamfest L.A. horror film festival. The film is being marketed and critiqued as a horror film.

But is it horror?

I've not seen the remake, but I've seen the original. I've been told by those who've seen both films that the remake's story is faithful to that of the original.

How does this story (the same in both versions), differ from the story in Death Wish?

It doesn't. All three stories are fundamentally identical. A woman is brutally raped and killed. This gives the audience permission to enjoy the bloody vengeance that is then visited upon criminals and thugs. All three films are not horror, but revenge fantasies.

Yes, there are minor variations, but do any of these elements differentiate I Spit on Your Grave from Death Wish so that the one is horror, but not the other?

In I Spit on Your Grave, the rape victim takes revenge, whereas in Death Wish, it's the victim's husband who takes vengeance. This may qualify I Spit on Your Grave as more feminist than is Death Wish, but not more of a horror film.

Another variation is that I Spit on Your Grave punishes the men who injured the woman, whereas Death Wish punishes any and all criminals (i.e., those who prey on women, and men, other than just the husband/vigilante's wife). This makes the revenge killings in I Spit on Your Grave more personal, but not more of the horror genre.

I Spit on Your Grave is more graphic than is Death Wish. The women are brutally raped in both films, but a man is castrated in I Spit on Your Grave, whereas the criminals are mostly shot in Death Wish.

But if I Spit on Your Grave is horror because of the rapist's more graphic death, are we not being asked to identify with the rapist? Is that what makes the film horror?

No, because horror requires that we identify/sympathize with the victim, not with the monster. This is why revenge fantasies by their very nature risk undermining the horror elements.

A final variation is that I Spit on Your Grave is a low-budget, indie film, whereas Death Wish is a big studio product. This is also why the former is more graphic; indie films were more graphic than studio fare in the 1970s.

This may be the key reason to the (false) perception that I Spit on Your Grave is a horror film. Back then, horror was more likely associated with low-budget, indie trash. Because I Spit on Your Grave was a low-budget indie film, and a highly graphic one, it was more likely to be marketed by the distributor, and accepted by the audience, as a horror film.

It's a marketing thing. Another example of people's genre perception being formed by marketing rather than by objective, rationally derived, aesthetic criteria.

Horror requires an Unnatural Threat. Something "not of this world." Some dramatic element that, as H.P. Lovecraft wrote, creates "a malign and particular suspension or defeat of the fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space."

An Unnatural Threat can take the form of the supernatural (e.g., The Sixth Sense, The Haunting, The Exorcist, The Mothman Prophecies, The Grudge, Lost Souls).

But an Unnatural Threat can also be an "unnatural creature" of science. That is, some creature that is unnatural to our current understanding of nature (Alien, The X-Files).

Can a slasher make for a horror film? Yes, provided that it is an unnatural slasher. Halloween was the first slasher horror film. This was because Michael Myers could not be killed. He was unnatural.

Myers was the first of what I term the Uberpsychos. Halloween's great contribution to horror was the invention of the Uberpsycho, a new type of monster. It was with Halloween's introduction of the Uberpsycho that the psycho crossed from the crime/suspense/mystery genres into horror.

But there is no Uberpsycho in I Spit on Your Grave. Just tawdry, sleazy, pathetic villains -- cruel, but ultimately weak and mortal. Can you imagine the heroine in I Spit on Your Grave defeating Myers or Jason? Of course not. Horror monsters are not so easily killed.

I have grudgingly carved an exception to the Unnatural Threat. I'm willing to concede that there is a second horror genre, which I call the Naturalistic Psycho Gorefest, wherein the victim is terrorized by mortal humans (e.g., Saw, The Devil's Rejects, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). But even in these films, there must be something that removes this stories from the natural and normal. Some element...an especially bizarre or deranged psycho, or an especially unusual environment or situation.

I see nothing in I Spit on Your Grave that removes it from the realm of crime drama/suspense/revenge fantasy.


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For more about my thinking on Unnatural Threats and the Naturalistic Psycho Gorefest, see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.

Horror Films Can Be Theistic or Nihilistic -- But Always Anti-Humanist

When I say that "horror is anti-humanist," I do not mean to insult either horror or humanism. Rather, I mean that a humanist sensibility weakens horror stories. Effective horror is either theistic or nihilistic.

By humanism, I mean that optimistic, secularist, usually materialist notion that "Man is the center of the universe," the "measure of all things," the "standard of all morality." That humans are inherently valuable. I regard Jean Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, and Ayn Rand as humanists.

By contrast, theism places man as subservient to higher beings (God, or gods, or some supernatural power). Man has value only to the extent that God grants him value. Even demons (or evil gods) recognize man's value -- why fight for his soul if it has no value?

Nihilism, like humanism, is also materialistic and secular, but nihilism sees man as no more valuable than any other entity in the universe. Just an accident of biology, without any meaning or purpose to his life.

Humanism elevates man to the top of the pyramid. Theism places man lower down the pyramid. Nihilism sets man on a flat plain, the equal of lions, jellyfish, cockroaches, and rocks.

In most horror films, victims are threatened by an Unnatural Threat. These films are usually theistic, in that they place the victims in the context of a supernatural universe (e.g., The Sixth Sense, The Haunting, The Exorcist, The Mothman Prophecies, The Grudge, Lost Souls).

However, even as the victim is overwhelmed by superior powers, there is a certain dignity in fighting superior creatures.

In other horror films, the victim is terrorized by squalid, sordid, grubby humans. Saw, Hostel, The Devil's Rejects, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre have no Unnatural Threat. Rather, these Naturalistic Psycho Gorefests dehumanize the victims, placing them at the mercy of mere mortals, and reduced to the status of animals. These victims' humanity means nothing, their situation hopeless (no God or Justice will rescue them). They are just another piece of meat to be slaughtered, eaten, shat out, and forgotten.

These films create a nihilistic sensibility. The protagonists' suffering has no value or meaning.

Theistic horror films evoke a "sense of wonder" as we realize our smallness before transcendent powers. Nihilistic horror films evoke a "sense of despair" as we realize our smallness before some creepy retard with an ax.

Sometimes it's hard to say whether a horror film is theistic or nihilistic. An Unnatural Threat need not be supernatural. Aliens are unnatural to our current understanding of nature (Alien, The X-Files). So too a psycho who can't be killed -- what I term the uberpsycho (Halloween). These films flirt with theism, in that they posit higher powers.

Yet some horror/sci-if is nihilistic. H.P. Lovecraft reflected a nihilistic worldview. His characters inhabit a godless universe, at the mercy of superior beings.

In any event, I can't think of any effective humanist horror films. Even if the victim wins at film's end, her journey was through either a theistic or nihilistic milieu.

This is not to say that humanists can't enjoy horror films. Horror is about the collapse of a safe, secure normalcy; the end of reality as we know it. A humanist may very likely be terrified if he (or a character on screen) confronts a suddenly nihilistic turn of events.

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For more about my thinking on Unnatural Threats, the Naturalistic Psycho Gorefest, Uberpsychos, and Horror/Sci-fi (and how it differs from science fiction), see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.