a long, LONG, LONG time ago i was inspired by various gurus to rewatch some classic horror movies with the intention of identifying the various “structural markers” – y’know the drill: Inciting Incident, Break into Act 2, and so on

but, as often happens, i got distracted by how i was feeling

so i began noting my “mental state” from moment to moment – and graded them on an 8-tiered Pulse-o-meter scale from positive & relaxed through neutral to feeling negative & fearful

(why eight tiers? no idea)

the abstract image above is based on the results – the movies from top to bottom (and in order of run time) are:
• An American Werewolf in London
• The Thing [1]
• Poltergeist
• Alien
• The Birds
• Jaws
• The Exorcist

aside from the unsurprising fact that horror movies tend to get scarier towards the end (the reddish bits), there doesn’t seem to be any clear patterns to discern ...

however, that may be due to the tiny sample size – and the poor quality of the data – after all, i’d seen all the films at least twice at the time of the experiment, so i was hardly an uncontaminated sample – and therefore my reactions were unlikely to be “true”

that said, i decided to layout the results on some charts

the above is the first page of a 2-page PDF – the first page simply tracks my Pulse-o-meter readings over the movies’ run times – on the second page, i “standardised” the movies to the “same length” – i know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, i just did it in case it revealed some hidden pattern ... which it didn’t

this is the same as the first page in the previous PDF, but with each bit annotated to help you orientate yourself as to where you are in the movie, like: “oh yeah, that’s where he wakes up in the zoo”

finally, i decided to go back to my initial idea and try to identify where the “structural markers” would fall

now i’ve dug through what notes survive from that time and i can’t figure out which, if any one structural paradigm i tried to apply to these movies – the chances are i probably tried to consolidate various gurus’ structures into one

which is to say, it would be best to assume that the function of each of these “structural markers” are of my own invention and should not be trusted – and further more, the placement of these “markers” were based on my understanding at the time, and so should also not be trusted

in short, as noted on the PDF: “Placement of the structural markers are, at most, educated guesses based on ‘book learning’ and gut instinct. Feel free to disagree.”

so, with those rather large caveats duly noted, is there some “obvious” structure that shines through? – not that i can see – nothing useful, at least

which shouldn’t be surprising – not just for the reasons noted above, which would be more than enough for most ardent “structuralists” to dismiss the whole exercise (and rightly so – like all good science, the data would need to be independently verified across a number of studies)

but there are other reasons why there are no obvious similarities in structure between the sampled movies

one reason is they were made at different times – and movies change as fashions change, and as audiences become more cinematically “literate”

but the main reason, i would argue, is that i doubt if any of the filmmakers behind any of these CLASSICS were concerned with sticking to a standard formula, i mean, structure (sorry) – i believe the writers and directors were more interested in telling their story and delivering an experience

perhaps it’s unfair to try and apply a “standard structure” to horror movies – after all, the genre is (supposed to be) about surprising the audience and unsettling them by subverting expectations ... things difficult to do, particularly if you decide to structure your story in a way the audience has seen a thousand times before

which raises the question: why are so many horror movies so formulaic?

[1] it probably doesn’t need to be said, but this is of course Carpenter’s 1982 movie – not the 2011 prequel

p.s. – on a related topic – for a forensic dissection on the arbitrariness of page counts (and their lack of relevance to your screenplay’s structure) read John August’s thoughts here and Stephen Follows’ research here

comments? questions?