In order to make a horror movie/book good, the "monster" must be generally more powerful than the humans who must fight it. This is easily seen in vampire films (and books), as vampires are clever, superhumanly strong, and also often have other superpowers. However, the villains cannot be to overpowering, so there is generally only one main vampire per story. Carmilla and Dracula each feature only one main vampire. The Batman vs Dracula features Dracula's army of vampires, but they are not standard, smart vampires; they are more like fast zombies. They are not even as fast as 28 Days Later-style zombies, which is why there are so many of them. We also see this in 30 Days of Night, where the vampires are not the type of vampire that can function in normal society, at least for a little while, like Dracula and Carmilla can. 30 Days of Night zombies are like animals, like fast zombies only smarter and able to work in a group. Because of this, they are only allowed to have a group, not a full horde. This type of thing is very similar to the inverse ninja rule, which states: The difficulty in killing a ninja is inversely proportional to the number of ninjas one is trying to kill, such that killing one ninja in impossible, killing two is difficult, but killing a hundred is easy. We can apply this to the horror genre and say that, because the total abilities of the monster(s) must be greater than that of the average human (or group) but less than that of the protagonistic person (or group), the number of monster(s) is inversely proportional to the abilities of a single monster. Thus; slow, unthinking, undead zombies will be much more numerous than fast, clever, handsome/beautiful, shape-shifting, hypnotizing vampires. This is my hypothesis, let's see if it holds true as we move through the semester.
you need a better picture for this
ReplyDeletei would also agree. i have never really thought about it in terms of the inverse ninja rule but you make a very valid point. also, for most movies and books that i can think of where there is a group of monsters, there is typically one that is stronger than the rest. all of the others are just like drones that can be picked off relatively easy in comparison to the main monster, be it vampires, werewolves, or zombies. but yes, lets keep your theory in mind as we go through the rest of the books and movies
ReplyDeleteyah. thats what i think of your picture nik.
ReplyDeleteUm, I was kinda likin' my picture. You know, just because you're on the internet and the moderator of this blog does not mean you HAVE to be a jerk about it. If I make a post with a picture, I expect to have that picture remain unless there's a good EXPLAINED reason for the takedown. "you need a better picture for this" does not cut it.
ReplyDeleteEspecially considering that I wrote a lengthy post that I thought about for a while, using punctuation and capital letters. Even my picture choice speaks to have it left up: it is not simply the cover of or a still from a movie we watched or are thinking about watching. Furthermore, shove it.
ReplyDeletenik your picture was a blown up picture that had like three words in it. idk what you thought it was or if that was it but it made no sense whatsoever. the picture you have now makes sense
ReplyDeleteOk. The picture I had before was the same, and after the first time it looked blown up of three words I redid it, and I guess it happened again after I saw it and before you took it down. Both those times I was linking to it. Now I have it uploaded from my computer so the link won't die.
ReplyDeletethats what i figured.
ReplyDeleteSure it is.
ReplyDelete