Horror Should Be Scary

The Creeper. A.M. Shine. 2022.

My most snobbish belief, apparently, is that horror should be scary. I think I’ve talked about that here before, but I’ve been occasionally frustrated on that score this year. I’ve picked up a few horror novels which were breathlessly recommended to me that I found wanting in various ways, and the most common was that the novels were simply dull and not at all frightening. I think there are people who, for better or worse, want different things from horror than what I want from it. I think a lot of people want feel-good stories with a horror aesthetic - the Addams Family rather than The People Under the Stairs. And that’s fine. Different strokes and all that, and people should read whatever they want. It’s not for me though, at least not when I’m looking for horror. If I wanted to feel good I wouldn’t be here.

The Creeper is not one of these books; it’s not especially interested in making you feel good, to its credit. It is, however, not really all that scary, and I think a big reason is that it’s just a little too neat. I think thrillers can be neat - Hitchcock often was, and much of the pleasure of his films comes from something like watching a master engineer at work, setting up problems just to show off the solution to them. Hitchcock was also an artist, and he knew when to be tidy and when to be messy, when to give the audience exactly what they wanted and when to surprise them, when to relieve their fears and when to dig into them and refuse to let go. Hitchcock mostly made thrillers, but he could do horror better than anyone. He knew the difference, and even more impressively he knew how to convincingly mix the two.

The Creeper is not a Hitchcock joint. It does lean more on the engineering side than the mess side, and I think that was the main reason I ultimately didn’t care for it. The plot seems to unfold mechanically: this happens, and then this happens, so then this happens, and then this happens, and then you’re done. There’s a scene in Mad Men (I talk about Mad Men a lot, don’t I?) when Don is critiquing a potential ad with an extended narrative structure. He says, to the younger writer describing it, “every time you say ‘and then’ that’s a chance for someone to get bored.” I know what he means: narrative action should seem organic, like the characters are behaving naturally without instruction rather than following a script.

The characters in The Creeper all seem like they’re following a script; they do things because they’re supposed to, because the plot demands it, not for any other reason. Why go to the isolated village? Why go home together afterwards? Why go back? Because you’re supposed to. Why do the villagers follow these bizarre occult rituals? Because it’s what they do, and they have no reason to stop. We don’t spend enough time in anyone’s head to understand them. We don’t spend enough time with the danger to be afraid of it.

The monster was ok, but it wasn’t enough. The protagonist spent much of the novel not knowing about, and then not believing in the danger, until it was too late. I would have been more scared to death if he had been, I think. We spend a lot of time with the main antagonist, and I do think a book exists about him - but he’s defeated so easily that all tension is deflated, and the focus on him comes at the expense of the main action, which throws the pacing off.

I finished this book and wasn’t left with much. It wasn’t scary, and it wasn’t non-scary in a deliberate or interesting way. It was, sadly, only a failure.