As
I've discussed in recent posts, bad writers often have
characters spout clichés and
catchphrases that are
inconsistent with their previous statements or behavior, because it's an easy way to fill up pages with dialog. Even good writers fall
into this trap, because clichés and catchphrases come naturally to
people. But good writers should delete these in
subsequent rewrites.
In
Death's Door (2015), a group of young people trespass into a deceased
magician's house for a night of partying. Naturally, the house traps
them inside. Ghostly manifestations and grisly
deaths ensue. The survivors search for clues as to what's happening,
and how they might escape.
While
some young folk search through boxes, perusing old
scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, Suzanne (Danielle Lilley)
says, "Maybe we shouldn't be doing this. This is all private
stuff."
Huh?
Suzanne trespassed
into this house along with everyone else. The film had no scenes
showing any hesitation on her part. Indeed, when we first meet
Suzanne, it is she who is pressuring her more timid friend
into coming along.
Thus it's out of
character for Suzanne to now feel scruples about invading
anyone's privacy. Nor do any previous scenes provide motivation for her
to have "matured" morally. Indeed, the recent
hauntings and killings in the house provide additional motivation in the opposite direction -- for Suzanne
to search the boxes for clues to escape the house.
So why did Kennedy
Goldsby write this line of dialog? Filler. Thoughtless filler.
Goldsby has several of his nondescript characters in the bedroom, and he
likely felt a need to give them each something to say. So he had Suzanne
say, "Maybe we shouldn't be doing this. This is all private
stuff."
After all, it's
what some people would say if they saw someone looking through
someone else's private belongings.
Except that Suzanne is no longer just
anyone. She has an inner life -- personality, emotions, habits,
morals, motivations -- as established by the previous scenes. But
Goldsby has forgotten his previous scenes. He seems to have focused solely on whatever scene he's currently writing. And he failed to notice Suzanne's inconsistency in subsequent
rewrites.
Death's
Door is a treasury of bad dialog: fillers, clichés, catchphrases,
and inconsistencies. The characters are nondescript and
interchangeable, lacking unique voices. Much of their dialog can be
randomly redistributed among them, without changing the story. They
shout and argue for no purpose other than to fill up time and try to create
"suspense." But as their arguments lack proper motivation,
their constant bickering is annoying rather than suspenseful or
revealing.
Death's
Door does have good make-up effects. It's an enjoyable film if you're
in the right frame of mind; if you just want to see a random group of
young people killed in gory fashion, and can do without a clever
story or engaging characters.
Low-budget horror films often spring
arbitrary surprises on viewers. The slashers' identities in
House of Death (1982, aka Death Screams) and Girls
Nite Out (1982), are arbitrary surprises because there was no
dramatic setup; no clues pointed in their direction. Some viewers
might have guessed, but only due to their familiarity with genre
conventions (i.e., He was too obviously innocent, or, She
couldn't be the killer so naturally she probably is).
Mysteries must play fair with readers
and viewers by providing clues before revealing the killer. That's
the purpose of the genre: to present a solvable puzzle. But horror's
primary purpose is to scare, and a dearth of clues can make an
unknown killer more frightening. If you can't guess his identity, he
can be anyone.
Yet all storytelling requires some
logic, even if only a kind of surreal "dream logic." (Dario
Argento and David Lynch are masters of dream logic.) So while horror
is more flexible on logic than some other genres, there is a breaking
point. Too many arbitrary surprises,
and audiences will roll their eyes, and have difficulty in suspending their disbelief. On the other hand, the more entertaining a film, the
more forgiving audiences are about any flaws, including plots holes,
stupid characters, and arbitrary twists.
The Canadian TV movie Twists of
Terror (1997) is aptly titled. Each tale in this horror anthology
has a "surprise twist." While the twists are unoriginal and
sometimes excessive in number, they are mostly well set up, and the
film is entertaining enough so we can forgive the strains in logic.
In "The People You Meet," a
young couple, Joe (Carl Marotte) and Amy (Jennifer Rubin), celebrate
their honeymoon over dinner. They express love for each other, though
there are intimations that all was not always well. Later, they
suffer a car accident at night. Rednecks kidnap them, tying up Joe in
a shed. He urges Amy to escape, which she does.
After she darts out of the shed, Joe
berates the rednecks. Surprise!
Turns out Joe hired the rednecks to
stage the accident, and rape and kill Amy so he could collect on the
insurance. Joe hates Amy. The rednecks leave the shed to hunt
down, rape, and kill Amy.
They return with Amy, unharmed, who
then mocks Joe. Surprise!
Turns out Amy knew that Joe hated her,
as she hates him -- and she was having an affair with the very
same redneck Joe hired, so she knew about Joe's plans. The redneck
now kills Joe.
This is a bit much. Screenwriter John
Shirley did drop some clues about problems in the marriage over
dinner, so we can believe Joe plotting against Amy. But Amy's affair
with the redneck feels arbitrary (a second twist for its own sake)
and ridiculous. Still, because "The People You Meet" is
entertaining and energetic, we can overlook the silly double twist.
In "The Clinic," Mr. Rosetti
(Nick Mancuso) is bitten by a dog at night. He stumbles upon a
hospital and enters for emergency care. But the doctor, the nurse,
the ambiance are strange and creepy. In the end Rosetti discovers
that he's in an insane asylum -- and the lunatics have taken over.
Surprise!
Again, not unexpected. Both the
ambiance (similar to that in X-Ray, aka Hospital Massacre,
1981), and genre conventions, promise a dark surprise. Nor is the
specific surprise all the surprising. We've seen this same "twist
ending" in Asylum (1972) and Don't Look in the
Basement (1973).
But the surprise was logically set up
by the atmosphere created by creepily soothing doctor, the
hyper-sexualized nurse, the deserted hallways and hints of gore. And
the story was entertaining.
In "Stolen Moments," Cindy
(Francoise Robertson) is a sexually and emotionally repressed woman
seeking romance. She has difficulty connecting with men. She instead
lavishes her affections on her many pets. Then she meets Barry
(Andrew Jackson), a yuppie in a singles bar, and agrees to meet him
at an empty house later that night. Is Cindy in danger?
She meet Barry. They have passionate
sex. Cindy thinks it's love. Then Barry brings out his male buddy.
Barry wants them to gang bang Cindy. Surprise!
Turns out Barry is a creep. But then he
speaks tenderly to Cindy. Maybe he's not so sleazy? Cindy agrees to a
threesome to please Barry. But afterward, Barry is cold to Cindy,
saying it's time to go home. Surprise!
Barry really is sleaze. As Barry is
getting dressed, he hears a scream. He finds his friend's freshly
killed corpse. Cindy looks terrified. Barry thinks there might be a
prower. Then Cindy knocks Barry out with a hammer. Surprise!
Turns out Cindy is the killer. Has she
snapped because they used her? But when she goes home, she has an
entire bulletin board with tokens from her past victims. Surprise!
Turns out Cindy is a serial killer. As
a newspaper headline confirms the next day.
None of this is surprising to those
familiar with genre conventions, so these surprises are not arbitrary. Both Cindy and Barry emitted warning signals. Cindy was
repressed, neurotic, with too many pets. A classic 1990s, neo-noir
femme fatale in the body of a prude. And Barry was too smooth
talking, sensitive, and handsome. A stereotypical blond yuppie
sleazeball pretending to be Mr. Perfect. From the start, I knew it
was 50/50 that Cindy was the villain.
Bad writers often have
a character spout clichés and catchphrases
that are inconsistent with their personalities or previous
statements, or pointless within the context of the story. Writers do this
because clichés and catchphrases are an easy, thoughtless way to
fill up a page. Such writers are too lazy or sloppy to
write appropriate dialog, or to keep their story and characters in mind while writing.
Even good writers
can make this mistake, because clichés and catchphrases come
naturally to people, writers included. But, while inappropriate
clichés and catchphrases might infect a first draft screenplay,
writers should be careful to delete them in subsequent rewrites.
The Dark (1979) is
great fun, as I explain in my review. But for all its merits, it also
provides an example of a character who contradicts herself with
clichés and catchphrases.
Zoe
(Cathy Lee Crosby) is a TV reporter who covers fluff, but is
eager to do hard news. She sees her potential big break when a serial
killer (actually, a space alien) starts terrorizing Los Angeles.
In one scene, Zoe accuses Detective
Mooney (Richard Jaeckel) of not doing enough to stop the killer. But
moments later, when Mooney responds by talking tough, Zoe switches
and accuses him of being too tough. "Thirty-two caliber
justice?" she accuses.
So, is Zoe a tough-on-crime crusader?
Or a bleeding heart liberal? She takes both sides in less than a
minute. Why? Perhaps the writer wanted Zoe to sound strong and
spunky, and thus was mindlessly filling Zoe's mouth with zingers,
however inconsistent.
Of course, it's possible that Zoe is
spouting inconsistent zingers because she's a disingenuous, yellow
journalist who'll say anything to make a splash. In which case,
that's her character. She is motivated not by any philosophy,
but by her ambition. She'll say anything to embarrass Mooney,
consistency be damned. In that case, the character is consistent
(even if her lines are not) and the script is fine.
But that is not the case. Zoe is
clearly a heroine we are meant to admire, so the scene is poorly
written.
Zoe is supposed to be smart, but she's
not very. She pontificates on TV that it's "ironic" that
the daughter of horror novelist Roy Warner (William Devane), who
writes gore, was killed in a gory fashion. Warner later accuses Zoe
of implying that it was "poetic justice." Zoe insists that
she meant ironic, but that's because she's illiterate. Irony requires
incongruity, so it would have been ironic if Warner's books had
promoted peace.
Zoe is supposed to be smart
and idealistic, yet as written, she sounds illiterate and ego-driven.
I won't blame screenwriter Stanford
Whitmore. After I wrote my initial review of The Dark, Whitmore
emailed me [on August 13, 2004]:
"I wrote [The Dark] on spec as a
piece that my friend, DP Bill Butler, would use to get his foot in
the directing door. My script was an experiment meant to take
advantage of Bill's camera, which would render the repeatedly
gathering dark remindful of the score for Jaws. An initial deal was
made with Dick Clark's company, and when that fell out, some thief
stepped up to single-handedly take over the script, fire Tobe Hooper,
and invent a monster shooting death rays. The upshot was the WGA
bringing suit on my behalf for monies owed, whereupon said producer
skipped town, putting a cherry on top."
Acting guru Konstantin Stanislavskitaught that
characters have inner lives that motivate their behavior at
every point in a story. A character's actions should be consistent
with his desires, goals, personality, and changing situation
throughout a novel, play, or film. It's how an actor should approach
a role. It's how a writer should write a character.
For every scene, the writer must ask,
If I want this character to do X, how can I motivate the character
to do X? If no believable motivation can be created, the
character should not do X.
Some reasons for poorly
motivated characters:
1. Writers treat characters like
puppets on a string, serving the interests of the plot, even when the
character's actions contradict their previously established inner
lives.
2. Writers fill a character's mouth
with clichés and catchphrases, because the writer is too lazy,
thoughtless, or untalented to construct sharp yet believable lines.
Poorly written stories are full of
characters who simply "decide" to do this or that.
Slasher films are famous for characters who decide to go for a
walk alone in the dark woods, after everyone else has mysteriously
disappeared. The character might even have been afraid to go out 20
minutes earlier, when the writer wanted the character to stay indoors.
But now that the writer wants the character to be killed,
the character changes his mind and decides to go for a walk.
This is the puppet on a string,
devoid of an inner life.
Audiences, sensing that something is off about the character, that the character is ridiculous, have difficulty suspending their disbelief and
empathizing with the character. Instead, they simply laugh when the
puppet is killed onscreen.
Poorly
motivated characters often spout self-contradictory dialog.
In
Lake Fear 3 (a bad film on many
levels), Revel (Shanon Snedden) is seeking her missing sister. Her
friend Chloe (KateLynn E. Newberry) thinks it's a lost cause. So she
hires TV psychic Vincent (Devi Khajishvili) to put Revel's mind to
rest about her sister.
Chloe's request is itself an astonishingly poor piece of writing.
She instructs the psychic, "She (Revel) needs closure. Just make
something up for all I care. She needs this."
Really?
Just make something up?
So Vincent can claim that Revel's sister is alive in Toronto,
married to a millionaire, or that she was tortured to death in Chicago --
doesn't matter.
But
writer Gerald Crum is determined to make his bad script worse.
Sitting down with Revel and Chloe, Vincent asks about the sister,
"So, ah, how did she go missing?"
Chloe snarkily interjects, "Isn't
that your job?"
Meaning, Vincent is supposed to be psychic. He
should know how the sister went missing.
But wait a minute. Chloe knows
Vincent is a fraud. She hired Vincent to lie to Revel. Chloe's
motivation is to give Revel closure. So why is Chloe undermining Revel's faith in Vincent's
psychic abilities? Chloe paid good money for Vincent to lie, and now
Chloe is sabotaging his ability to lie.
My guess is that writer Crum was focused on the scene, in making Chloe sexily snarky, and forgot about the previous scene. He was treating Chloe like a puppet,
having her serve the current scene (here is where you "decide" to
be sexily snarky), and he forget about Chloe's inner life and
motivations as established in previous scenes.
Also, Crum might have thought that
Chloe's putdown of Vincent's psychic abilities was a funny bit of
dialog. Crum's focus was on the scene and the line, not
on Chloe's character -- her inner life and motivations.
Lake Fear 3 is full of bad dialog, poor
characterization, and awful acting. (The makeup effects are good.) An especially egregious example of bad dialog occurs after demons attack the trio and Revel is killed. Chloe and
Vincent find themselves with Remington (Joshua Winch), who knows about demons. Crum thinks this is good time for his
characters to engage in an argument.
Bad writers often have characters
engage in poorly motivated arguments, because they think it's
a good way to create tension, suspense, and drama. And during this pointless argument ...
Chloe snaps at Vincent, "Like
you're one to talk. You're just a fraud."
Vincent replies, "Oh my God.
That's called being an actor."
Chloe says, "Okay, yeah. Well,
if you would have told me and my friend that you were just an actor,
we'd be hundreds of miles away by now. But no. You needed your fifty
dollars."
Huh? Chloe knew Vincent was a
fraud. She hired him to "Just make something up." She even admits to paying him $50. So why is she in the same breath saying "if you would have told me and friend you were just actor, we'd be hundreds of miles away by now."
Apparently, writer Crum isn't paying
attention to anything he'd previously wrote. His focus is always on his current scene, ignoring whatever came before. And he's filling up
every scene with whatever lines sound snarky, cool, funny, or dramatic -- to hell with the context of the story, or consistency of character.
Viewers who are still paying attention
at this point are rolling their eyes.
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.
Poorly motivated characters are a common problem. These characters' actions are inconsistent with their previous behavior. Writers treat these characters as puppets, having them say or do things merely to advance the story, without regard as to whether that character, as established by his other actions or statements, would do that
Slasher film victims are a classic
example. It often makes no sense for them to wander about the woods at
night after everyone has strangely disappeared. Yet they do so
anyway, merely because the writer wants
to get that character from point A to point B.
In Search of Lovecraft
(2008) provides another example. In this film, two TV journalists,
Rebecca and Mike (Renee Sweet and Tytus Bergstrom), investigate a Lovecraftian cult. The film explodes with poor directing, acting, and
writing, but I'll limit myself to a few scenes.
Who is this Mike character?
Writer/director David J. Hohl establishes that Mike is an Army
veteran who has seen combat. Mike carries a gun. He's strong. He's
brooding. He's tough.
Dr. D'Souza (Saqib Mausoof) tips off Mike and Rebecca that information on the cult might be
obtained at a certain spot in the woods, late at night. Mike and Rebecca drive there and park. Their intern, Amber (Denise Amrikhas),
sits in the back seat. (above)
We hear a noise. The car
shakes. A tentacle descends on the windshield. The creature
breaks the rear window. The panicked Amber exits the car. The creature
pulls her up and out of sight. Rebecca opens the car door, about to exit and rescue Amber.
Holding back Rebecca, Mike says, "You
can't go outside."
"But we have to find Amber,"
Rebecca protests.
Remaining safe in the car, Mike shines his flashlight out the window.
"Do you see her?" asks
Rebecca.
"Too late,"
says Mike. "Go! Go
now! Go now!"
What are ex-soldier Mike's motivations? Is he really a coward? Or perhaps he only wanted to "go now"
because he was protective of Rebecca, the woman he really cares about?
Let's see what Mike does next.
The
next day, Mike and Rebecca set up a meeting with Dr. D'Souza at a
park in San Francisco. Upon spotting D'Souza, Mike rushes up and grabs
him, as though about to beat up D'Souza.
"Amber's gone!" Mike
shouts. "Will you tell us what's going on!"
"Do you have any idea what
happened to us last night?" asks Rebecca.
"What the fuck attacked us?"
asks Mike.
"I
warned you about the cult,"
D'Souza replies.
Why
is Mike attacking D'Souza? Up till now they trusted him. Mike never showed any concern for
Amber in any previous scene. And if Mike did care about Amber, why didn't
he try to find and help her last night? Instead of urging Rebecca to drive off now?
Mike is acting tough simply to act tough. Acting tough not from any
motivation, but because writer Hohl wants Mike to act tough. Maybe Hohl thinks that having Mike bully D'Souza
will inject drama
into the scene.
And
then Mike's character grows less consistent.
While
Mike and D'Souza are bickering, a disheveled bum approaches Rebecca.
He grabs her arm and presses a bloody handkerchief against it.
Rebecca,
Mike's love interest, is being attacked. Rebecca screams that she's being "hurt." How does Mike react?
Upon
hearing Rebecca's screams, Mike slowly
turns to see what's troubling her. And then does ... nothing.
Like a block of wood, Mike watches the bum leave, having given the handkerchief -- containing Amber's ear -- to Rebecca.
So
what is Mike's character? Tough? Brave? A hothead?
Mike
is tough, brave, and hotheaded enough to bully D'Souza, who's
threatening no one.
But Mike doesn't attack the bum, who
was "hurting" Rebecca.
Even with Rebecca screaming right beside him, Mike only slowly takes notice of her.
Is
Mike a coward? Afraid of the bum? Yet D'Souza is taller and younger than the bum. Mike might run from a tentacled monster, but if he can fight D'Souza, he can take
the bum. So if Mike's not afraid of the bum, why didn't he defend Rebecca?
Is
Mike a hothead?
Hotheaded enough to attack D'Souza for
an event that occurred last night.
But not so hotheaded as to attack a bum who right now was "hurting"
the woman he truly cares for.
Mike's
instances of toughness, bravery, and hotheadedness are inconsistent. They come and go without rhyme or reason. Without any discernible motivation.
Mike does what he does because writer Hohl uses Mike -- and the other characters -- as empty-headed puppets, their sole purpose to move things along from scene to scene. Mike runs from the monster because Hohl is finished with that scene. Mike shouts at D'Souza because Hohl thinks it's dramatic. Mike ignores the bum because Hohl wants the bum to leave.
Mike acts according to Hohl's motivations because Hohl hasn't provided Mike with any of his own motivations.
Inconsistent,
poorly motivated characters are less "real." Thus,
audiences are less likely to sympathize and empathize with them.
Which weakens the horror in a horror film.
Emily Carmichael's horror comedy short film, The Ghost and Us, provides an excellent working example of the old screenwriting rule, Show, Don't Tell.
In the film, Laura (Maria Dizzia), is newly married to a man she loves. Ben (Geordie Broadwater) loves her back. The problem is that Ben's ex-wife, Sena (Moira Dennis), won't let go. She keeps dropping by unannounced. Laura even finds Sena in the newlyweds' bedroom, whispering sweet nothings into Ben's ear.
Laura can't even get a restraining order against Sena, because ... Sena is dead. The woman isn't just a stalker, she is a spiritual stalker.
Despite its short length (11 minutes), The Ghost and Us provides story arcs for all three of its characters (wife, husband, dead wife). All three characters change in some small way by film's end.
Especially admirable is the film's mid-point scene. As Syd Field teaches, the mid-point is where one should normally place a film's key turning point/incident -- an incident that affects the main characters' story arcs. The Ghost and Us not only achieves this, but it does so by showing, not telling.
Prior to this mid-point scene, Laura and Sena have battled and bickered over Ben's affections. The mid-point scene begins after Laura and Sena have engaged in a temporary truce. Together, they share a snack in the kitchen. Girl stuff of the sort that bonds women.
Then it becomes apparent that Sena cannot eat. She's a ghost.
Laura's attempt to help Sena eat, and the latter's realization that she's no longer of this world, both strengthens their bond, and conveys a poignancy that lifts The Ghost and Us above a mere spook tale. Adding to the scene's strength is that:
1. It's conveyed visually. Rather than having the two women say nice things about each other, Carmichael shows Sena's inability to eat, and Laura's futile attempt to help her rival.
2. It's not overdone or overlong. The incident occurs. It's over. The women return to battle. (Albeit with a greater understanding of their situation, and of each other, hence, their emotional story arcs are advanced.) By not belaboring this scene, The Ghost and Us avoids the trap of cheap sentimentality.
Actually, The Ghost and Us is admirable for just having a story and characters. All too many horror films these days are just an unmotivated succession of scenes which contain nothing but gore effects.
Emily Carmichael is an NYU film school graduate whose work has screened at the Sundance Film Festival. She may be contacted at Kid Can Drive.
Method acting teachers instruct their students to always ask: What's my character's motivation? The actor should know who is this character? What is his history? What does he want? What just happened that got him to this place or situation?
Then the kicker: What is his next, most logical action based on his past history, wants and desires, and most recent experiences?
Writers should likewise keep those issues in mind when creating and propelling characters from scene to scene. There should be a reason -- motivation -- for a character to do something.
Poorly motivated characters are a horror film cliché. The most cited example is stupid teenagers who wander aimlessly about dark forests and empty houses, long after all their friends have mysteriously disappeared. Why would anyone do that?
Poorly motivated characters arise when writers focus solely on the events in a story, such that they treat the characters as mere props.
The writer wants Joe to kill Mary in the locker room. So the writer makes Mary go into the locker room, even if she has no logical reason to go there -- even if she has strong reasons to avoid the locker room.
Because characters engage an audience, strong characters heighten the horror. Conversely, poorly motivated characters weaken the horror.
Yes, it may be fun to watch stupid characters die. But longtime horror fans become jaded to shocks and violence, so the fun wears down. For a horror film to unnerve viewers, it helps if we care about the characters. And that's harder to do if they're one-dimensional clichés who behave unrealistically.
Comedies are an exception, a genre for which audiences make allowances for unrealistic behavior and outlandish coincidences, provided the film is funny.
But Dark Floors is a humorless horror film, credited to seven writers, none of whom bothered to focus on the characters' motivations.
In Dark Floors, Ben is a loving father, who has taken his sick daughter, Sarah, to a hospital for tests.
Poor writers will often rely on cheap devices to seek sympathy for their characters -- look, a sick child! Poor thing! And her dad's all weepy because he loves her! Heartstrings!
But a mere setup is not enough to create an engaging character. If Ben and Sarah are poorly motivated, the emotional impact of Ben's loving, teary-eyed gaze will diminish. As is the case in Dark Floors.
Ben and Sarah enter a hospital elevator with a disparate bunch: a tough Security Guard, a Homeless Man, Emily (a nurse), and a Selfish Asshole.
His name is Jon, but his character is no more than the Selfish Asshole. The typical cowardly, arrogant, obnoxious type that crops up in many horror films. You know he'll die before the film's end.
The elevator doors open onto an empty hospital floor. The characters exit, then wander about aimlessly (did all of them even intend to get off on this floor?). A ghost chases and scares them. They huddle in a room, wondering what just happened?
Contemptuous of the others, Jon decides to leave on his own. Why? He suggests that maybe it's all an illusion, perhaps from a gas leak. After he leaves, a demon attacks him in the elevator.
Ben and the Security Guard rescue Jon. Yet afterward, Jon shows no gratitude or humility. His character is poorly motivated. A normal person (even a selfish asshole), would at least give the pretense of gratitude.
Soon after his rescue, Jon watches the Security Guard try to break through a basement wall, so they can escape the empty, haunted hospital. Jon mocks the Security Guard's vain efforts, sneering, "C'mon, Rambo. Do something useful. Find us a real way out."
Why would Jon say that? Merely because the writer wanted Jon to be obnoxious -- though that's not how Jon should behave, considering his recent near death, and that the Security Guard helped save Jon's life.
The Security Guard is irritated by Jon. (His irritation is well motivated.) But then he snarls, "You want it out?" -- essentially threatening to beat up Jon.
More poor motivation. The Security Guard has now gone overboard.
Yet it's typical of poorly motivated characters of any genre. Writers will inject pointless bickering, arguments, and fights into their scripts, in a lame attempt to "heighten the tension." Pointless, because there is no good reason for the characters to argue -- no proper motivation -- other than that the writer wanted the characters to argue, and so he made them argue.
How often have you seen films in which a disparate group of people trapped in a "tense situation" get on each others' nerves for no good reason?
Talented writers can create tense drama without mindlessly argumentative characters. Consider Mulder and Scully in The X-Files. Their cool, procedural, methodical investigations, and the secrets they uncovered, were tense and dramatic enough without injecting pointless arguments. Even the villains (e.g., Cancer Man) were usually deathly cool.
Engaging characters in interesting stories needn't argue to create drama.
This also meant that when arguments did erupt on The X-Files, their emotional impact was greater. An event's rarity increases its impact.
Here's Dark Floors worst (of many) examples of poorly motivated characters. The Security Guard and Homeless Man are dead. Jon suggests to Ben that the ghosts (or demons?) want Sarah. If they sacrifice Sarah to the monsters, they'll be safe.
Poor motivation: Even if Jon were right, no rational person would advise a loving father to sacrifice his sick daughter to monsters. Yet Jon actually expects Ben to agree!
Ben is outraged. (Good motivation.) But then Ben realizes that Sarah needs her medicine. So Ben decides that he and Emily will search the hospital for Sarah's medicine -- and Ben decides to leave Sarah alone with Jon!
Huh?
And listen to Ben's contradictory dialogue. Before he leaves, Ben says to Jon, "Watch her." Then he adds, "You even lay a finger on her, you won't live to regret it."
Huh?
Ben leaves Sarah in the care of a man who wants to kill her? Ben even -- contradictorily -- asks Jon to protect Sarah, while feeling the need to threaten Jon into not harming Sarah?
It's not like Ben doesn't have options. He can take Sarah with him (he's pushed her wheelchair throughout the film). Or he can insist that Jon go with him, while he leaves Emily with Sarah. Or he can ask Emily to find the medicine on her own, or with Jon, while Ben stays behind with his daughter.
But Dark Floors's seven writers failed to ask What's Ben's motivation?
What does Ben want? (To find medicine for Sarah.) What recently happened to Ben? (Jon threatened to sacrifice Sarah to the monsters.) What is Ben's most logical next move? (To find medicine for Sarah in a way that doesn't leave her at the mercy of Jon.)
Instead, the writers focused solely on the events -- the cool, scary horror scenes they wanted to show. They wanted Jon alone with Sarah, so Jon could give Sarah to the monsters. So the writers simply made Ben and Emily leave Sarah alone with Jon, contrary to those characters' logical motivations -- treating the characters as props rather than as thinking, feeling persons.
In summary:
1. Strong characters engage an audience, and heighten the horror. This is because shocks and gore are more unnerving when they happen to characters we care about.
2. One dimensional setups (the loving dad) are not enough to create a strong character. The character must be well motivated throughout the story.
3. Poor motivation arises because writers focus solely on a script's events (what happens), rather then on pondering every character's motivation for every action they take (or avoid taking), throughout the entire script.
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For more about how horror films effectively unnerve -- or fail to unnerve -- audiences, 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.
Characters hook an audience. Readers remember Sherlock Holmes and James Bond even if they forget the plot points or dramatic details.
What is character? Writing + acting = character.
The most memorable characters from classic films and TV shows are created by chemistry. The chemistry that occurs when the right actor meets the right part. This is why it's been said that 90% of directing is casting.
What has this to do with scripting a horror film?
When I first saw Dawn of the Dead it blew me away. I was in my teens and had never before seen such gore. But after thirty years of horror, I'm bored by gore. Actors in bad makeup eating bloody intestines put me to sleep.
I think this is why so many zombie comedies are being shot. Hardcore horror fans are jaded. At a certain point, gore alone looks silly or sordid, rather than scary or shocking. Filmmakers can try to "push the gore envelop," but I'm not sure there's anywhere left to go.
How then to engage audiences for your latest horror film? Character.
Horror films have been compared to rollercoasters. To which I'll add: characters are the car. A great character engages an audience. Audiences sympathize and empathize with the character, getting into the character's skin so they can "suspend disbelief" and enter the character's world, being shocked and frightened by whatever shocks and frightens the character.
Effective characters take audiences for a ride on the coaster. Ineffective characters leave audiences standing on the ground, outside the story and looking up at the coaster. They see it twisting and turning, but they're not on board experiencing the thrill of the ride.
How to create an effective character, one who engages an audience? Audiences should care about the character, but that is not to say the character must be likeable.
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For more about creating an effective horror story, especially on film or video, 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.
