I watched the new The Mummy movie from Universal’s Dark Universe franchise. It was more of an action movie than a horror movie.That got me thinking, what could have made it more horror?
Suspense seemed to be the missing component. At every step, the audience knew what was happening and what to expect. It would have been a cheat to bring out something completely unexpected, but there really needed to be some mystery.
Maybe suspense is difficult. Perhaps I’m asking too much, though I’ve seen plenty of movies with proper suspense. I wondered it I could pull off that sort of thing. That called for an experiment.
The Experiment
I sat in the Bistro on the writers’ night. Strange writer people sat around small tables, lost in conversations together or manuscripts alone. Bottles of wine filled the shelves that covered all the walls. The country music played a touch too loud for writing. The yellow lights were almost too dim for a pencil-and-notebook writer like me.
It should have been a good time to write, but something tugged at my mind. There was something not quite right, but I couldn’t tell what.
By nature, most writers are odd. Being in a group relaxes them enough that they let their strangeness flow more freely. I couldn’t pick any particular one of them that could be setting off my warnings. Maybe it was something else.
Cold air blasted from a vent near my feet. I hadn’t seen the vent lurking under the wine shelves. What other things could be hidden there? Old stories often include hidden things on or behind shelves. Disguised latches led to secret passages which led to the dark secrets themselves.
The Bistro was not the first occupant of this space. The structure was at least a century old and probably more. What had been here originally? What has lived here since?
It was a common theme in the area. The latest things covered over the past. Often, it was just a layer of new, a facade, lying atop the old. That-which-had-been slumbered beneath, projecting a subtle silhouette of itself on the surface.
Seventy million years ago, all of this sat in the silt of the Great Inland Sea, so the scientists said. As fearsome beasts fed in the sea above, the missed bits of their prey settled. Now those bits were fossils, old bones embedded in stones, dead to the world.
That was long past. So were the inhabitants of the last centuries, the pioneers and their children. What bones did they leave? Was it their own bones or that of their prey? Perhaps just the bones of labor and dreams.
I realized that my imagination was being active. The Bistro may be new in an old building, but there are building codes and inspections, especially when food is concerned. Anything bad left by the previous occupants would have been removed.
The same imagination remarked, “The inspectors only look at physical things.”
Cold continued its flow from the hidden vent beside me. A modern air conditioning system would blow air from the ceiling where it could settle and mix with the room air. The floor vent was just another leftover from elder days; the past infringing on the present.
When would floor vents have been put in? How far back did they go? Obviously they went back to when people could smoke cigarettes in businesses. Did it go back to bellbottom pants? Did it reach the days when men wore fedoras? When did it replace the pot bellied stove in the old shop?
How many people breathed the air that then went through those ducts? Was it just air, or did each person leave a subtle shade of themselves with each exhalation?
Again, an imagination running wild. Left on its own, it would build a community of ghosts lurking in the structure. Every employee, every customer, every mouse that ever sheltered under this roof adding to the specters dwelling in the walls.
I focused on shaking the feeling of presence. If it was just imagination, it could be overcome by thinking. With effort, I finally convinced myself that there was nothing in the vents nor in the shelves.
Relaxation came back and I could devote myself to writing. I did so with vigor.
As for the hidden vent beside my table, it continued to blow cold air. In the walls, the community of ghosts welcomed the small shadow of me that would always be there.
Analysis
My first concern was that this piece didn’t seem to tell much of a story. What was the conflict? What was the resolution? Then I realized it was one of those man versus himself stories the academics describe.
The narrator is fighting his own sense that something is subtly haunting his environment. Can he resolve this? He thinks he reaches resolution when he shakes the feeling and continues with his intended task. However, the real resolution would seem to be that the building has gotten the little piece of him that it wanted and it has let the rest of him go.
I noticed that the imagery of the piece seems to repeat. There is mention of pieces of prey falling to the seafloor to become fossils permanently stored. Then, there are references to pieces of the past protruding into the present. Finally, the story touches on pieces of the previous residents (human and animal) that are left behind. This all leads to the community of ghosts taking just a piece of the narrator.
As for suspense, that is more difficult to tell. I really think I would need an external audience to tell me if this is suspenseful. The problem is that I already know the story, so objectivity is out the window.
The attempt at suspense included several things. First, the narrator feels that something is wrong, but cannot give anymore detail than that. The idea is to leave the details as something to be revealed later and, hopefully, encourage the reader to go forward to the end.
The description of the bistro itself was intended to provide an uncomfortable place for a writer. Many writers would prefer a coffee shop, since those tend to be quieter and more cosy. The idea of loud country music and dim, yellow lights would seem inappropriate. I’ve also noticed that many people associate yellow lights with places that are not well lit and are more isolated.
The shelves and the vent should suggest hidden things. Mentioning the shelves in old movies should help bring up imagery that the reader already carries. Along with those images should be the feelings the reader experienced while watching those movies. If the person can bring along previous unease or fear, then it will just help add to the current feelings.
Existing fears are the reason for mentioning the Great Inland Sea. Many people don’t like the idea of deep waters and the predators that lurk there. The idea that the current dry land was once at the bottom of that sea is a little unsettling. Old fossils from that time are common, so it acts as a reminder of ancient death that still pokes through into our world. The ancient body of water can also tap into the imaginations of those who are fans of Lovecraft.
The mentions of all the people who have come and gone helps bring up the idea that many of those people are deceased. The proprietor of the business in the nineteen thirties would be long passed, and yet that person spent many days at the establishment, leaving breath and sweat, and whatever spirit one leaves through proximity. This suggests a gradual building of whatever it is the narrator is feeling.
The last attempt to add suspense is denial from the narrator. At several points, the narrator attempts to convince himself that the sensations are the work of an overactive imagination. If he had simply accepted that something was wrong, he would have chosen to walk out and been done with the whole thing. Good stories are rarely based on the protagonist making the wise decision to not get involved. By resisting his feelings, the narrator makes himself stay long enough for something to actually happen.
Those are my attempts to add suspense. Again, I cannot be objective about its effectiveness; I can only hope. Maybe that’s where the movie writers went wrong. Perhaps they did not get objective feedback on the suspense needed to make a horror movie instead of an action movie. On the other hand, it’s possible some executives somewhere decided that action was the way to go.