OH NO GEORGE DANIEL LEA IS STUCK IN A HORROR FRANCHISE

22/9/2022

Oh, that's easy: The Conjuring franchise. I've never come across a series of films that baffles me more in terms of their popularity, especially amongst horror circles. By the numbers, rote “haunted house” and possession movies whose metaphysics is as simplistic and moribund as you can get, that also commit the unforgiveable sin of lionising those overt con-artist bastards, the Warrens.

OH NO I’M STUCK IN A HORROR

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You wake up and find yourself in a horror franchise, what franchise would you prefer to wake up in and why?

Oh, goodness; if you knew how often I've imagined this scenario, you'd likely have me committed. A friend of mine, the composer and performance artist, Ray Curran, often says of horror media that the very best he's ever experienced is that which invites you to imagine: what would I do in this scenario or situation? And I can't disagree; that immersion is the source of what makes horror work on a visceral level: what if it were me? How would I respond? Most often, I have to say, my response would be to find a quiet corner, curl up into a ball and hope I'm never found by whatever the hell's out there.

In terms of the franchise I would prefer, the scenario I would prefer, I'd have to say, it would be the eponymlous town of the survival horror video game franchise, Silent Hill. The horror of Silent Hill is of a peculiar species that owes more to the likes of Shirley Jackson and Henry James than, say, Wes Craven or George Romero (not to diminish either of those; merely to draw the distinction): In Silent Hill, threats to the physical self and immediate, physical manifestations of horror take a distant second place to psychological resonance and symbolic insinuations. The town, akin to classic horror settings such as Hill House, Blye Manor and The Overlook Hotel, is a sustained psychic phenomena, a metaphysical palimpsest upon reality, which alters its condition to reflect the sublimated concerns and neuroses of those who walk there. Whilst one might very well encounter monsters, they are ones own; creatures crafted from metaphor and born from the deepest reaches of the victim's subconsciousness. In Silent Hill, horror isn't merely the inevitability of death or suffering; it is the realisation of our unspoken selves, our most forbidden traumas, desires, despairs. And thus, whilst it might very well break and consume us (as it does so many), it can also serve as a medium of healing, even transcendence.

For my part, I can't hep but wonder what my peculiar Silent Hill would look like, what monsters and atrocities would infest it. And, beyond that, hat it would make of me when it's finished (Silent Hill has a peculiar tendency of transforming those who walk there, sometimes in the abstract, sometimes physically, most often both).

In fact, any of those franchises which refine horror down to an examination of our personal traumas and forbidden desires is very much my jam. Clive Barker's Hellraiser is another obvious candidate (at least, given the mythology of the first two films): whilst those lost to Leviathan's Labyrinth must endure torments beyond the imagining of most sane human beings, a rare few emerge from it transformed, become the iconic “demons to some, angels to others” known as Cenobites. As in Silent Hill, the process of becoming a Cenobite involves the breaking down of the individual on a psychological level, their identities and states of mind gradually eroded by the raking and ripping open of their subconsciousness. Beneath the black light of Leviathan, god of the Cenobites, everything we sublimate and suppress is paraded before us, experienced over and over, alongside physical mutilation and torments that no flesh and blood entity can endure. Through that process, our preconceptions not only of pain and pleasure, but of self are undone, twisted and reconfigured into new shapes, until the perverse ideal of a Cenobite is born from the wreckage of humanity.

As with Silent Hill, I cannot help but wonder what form my Cenobite would take, what unspoken and sublimated traumas and desires Leviathan would use as the means and substance of my remaking.

You find yourself as the “Final One” which monster / villain would you most like to go up against ands why do you think you would survive?

In the case of Silent Hill, the entities we ultimately face are the most monstrous realisations of our inner selves. For James Mason in Silent Hill 2, it's the iconic, immortal stalker known as Pyramid Head, that manifests all of James's complicated reactions to his wife's sickness (defeated desire, diseased love, the loss of a life once dreamed of etc). So, I have to wonder what Barkerian monstrosity the town and its metaphysics would comprise from the depths of my psyche, the polluted stuff of my imagination? Typically, the iconic antagonists are nightmarish and impossible to “defeat” in conventional terms (the aforementioned Pyramid Head cannot be fought or killed as any other video game monster; only run from and defended against, until the game's closing chapters, when James finally comes to realise and accept his own demons, which prompts Pyramid Head to commit elaborate suicide, and provide the means of accessing the game's conclusion). In that regard, surviving would involve an extremely traumatic confrontation with one's inner self, an acceptance of everything one loathes and fears in one's own mind. Most do not survive that encounter; they lose their minds and sometimes their souls to the town. Doing so involves a kind of rebirth through trauma; not conquering or defeating one's demons, but accepting them as part of oneself. As such, facing what Silent Hill gives birth to is arguably one of the most dangerous and treacherous engagements horror can provide: it risks so much beyond mere death. Here, the loss of oneself is a very real possibility, risking becoming just another lost and tormented ghost in the town's diseased metaphysics.

I'm not sure I'd have the psychological strength to pull through.

And which creature would you least like to go up against?

When it comes to horror franchises, the entities I'd least like to face are the mundane ones; the slasher movie stalkers that have nothing more in mind than providing a grizzly and overly elaborate death. It's entirely lacking in the wider possibilities that comes with other forms and subjects of horror, even at their most hideous and dangerous (for example, even the most vicious, inhumane tale of demonic possession suggests a wider state of metaphysics, a continuation that makes death paltry. Such is not true in those stories of mundane murder that simply involve being in the wrong place at the wrong time).

Alternatively, something like the unseen, malevolent force in The Blair Witch Project would be hideous to experience, as there's no potential or possibility of reasoning or escape. No matter what you do, that force is going to put you through hell, break you down and then finally end you in one way or another. There is a hideous inevitability to those scenarios, a pervasive sense that, no matter what you do or say or offer, you will never escape. The elemental evil of those places will play its sadistic games, torment and terrify, until it grows weary of the game and closes in for...whatever fate it has in store. That's a terrifying prospect; the entity or force that cannot be escaped, undone or reasoned with. That can't even be apprehended to any meaningful degree.

But I'd even prefer that to your average slasher-movie stalker; at least that is more interesting.

You find yourself in Scooby Doo, which character are you, and who would most like to have as the other members of Mystery Inc?

Given my proclivities, I'm almost certainly the Velma of the group; the one who finds everything fascinating and doesn't have the good sense to be scared, even when everything is going to Hell. Give me the forbidden ritual, I'm performing it, give me the occult puzzle box at the centre of hundreds of mysterious disappearances, I'm solving it. I want to know, god damn it!

As for the rest, if I might select from the casts and menageries of horror media, then our “Fred” would most certainly be the Mads Mikkelsen incarnation of Hannibal. I mean, why wouldn't it be? We'd have a man on our side more preternaturally capable and terrifying than most ghosts, demons and supernatural entities. Beyond that, he'd likely get the “mystery” instantly, meaning we could all retire early and go for a nice meal (errr...).

Our Daphne would have to be Chris Hemsworth's Kevin from the 2016 Ghostbusters; someone extra-pretty and pretty clueless, but there to provide a side of beef to Hannibal's sleeker, more refined stylings. Doesn't have to do much, really. Just stand around looking pretty, likely getting captured by whatever ghost/demon/ne'redowell is about. Shaggy? Not quite the same archetype, but I'd have to go for Dewey from the Scream franchise. Again, not exactly capable, but we've already got all of that in Hannibal. Dewey seems to be an antagonist-magnet, and also seems to be functionally immortal, given the amount of times he gets sliced up in those films and survives. Handy as a distraction while Hannibal does his work.

As for Scooby himself? Well, fuck it; let's have a Predator in Scooby's place. Try screwing with that, Old Man Willoughby the suspicious-acting Groundskeeper.

And, if we must include a Scrappy-doo, I think a Critter from the eponymous b-movie franchise fulfils the criteria pretty well.

Pinhead pops round for an evening of fun, what are you pains and pleasures?

Oh dear, I didn't realise it was going to get personal. How NSFW are we allowed to get? The thing with Pinhead and the Cenobites is, it doesn't matter what I want or don't want; they're going to give me an experience that transcends any measure or definition of it. So, for me, it's a case of: bring it on. Whatever they have a mind to show, reveal or inflict. I've no doubt, given what's revealed in the first two films, it will be a terrible, unbelievably traumatic experience, but I also have no doubt it will be revelatory, possibly transformative.

I suppose, if I might paraphrase a certain line from The Wishmaster, it would be a case of: “Show me wonders.” And I have no doubt they'd be quite happy to indulge.

Speaking in purely worldly terms? I suppose my pleasures would be pretty standard: good food, good stories, good conversation, good sex. That's more or less it. I'm sure the Cenobites would find me pretty boring in that regard.

Pains? Where to start? Banality is something I find agonising. The drear greyness of day to day existence inside a shell of rotting meat and bone. That frustrates me. The self-destructive insanity of our systems and traditions often makes it feel as though there are hot knitting needles driving in and out between the plates of my skull. Feeling futile and powerless in the face of forces and phenomena that were vast and ineluctable before I was even conceived, but which I'm now expected to endure and even fight back against? Yeah, that is an endless source of pain to me.

The Wishmaster gives you three wishes

1. You can wish to write in any franchise
2. You can wipe one franchise from the minds of everyone
3. You can date your horror crush

What do you chose?

It would have to be Hellraiser. Of all the horror franchises that have been driven into the dirt and the depths of utter disgrace by successive sequels, I feel there's still so much potential for storytelling and myth-making here, so much that's gone sadly untold. If anything, the franchise is prime subject matter for a streaming series of some description (but, like so many examples, requires the involvement of creators who understand what it's about at its most essential, rather than the drivel of escalating comic-book violence it has become). A close focus on the implied mythology as established in Hellraiser 2, ignoring everything that came after, would be favourite.

Oh, that's easy: The Conjuring franchise. I've never come across a series of films that baffles me more in terms of their popularity, especially amongst horror circles. By the numbers, rote “haunted house” and possession movies whose metaphysics is as simplistic and moribund as you can get, that also commit the unforgiveable sin of lionising those overt con-artist bastards, the Warrens.

Mads Mikkelsen's rendition of Hannibal? Fantastic. I don't particularly care if I end up on the menu, in that instance; it'll be probably be worth it (and at least I know he'll definitely make good use of me. I'd likely end up as something artistic and/or delicious).

Born in Blood Volume Two
by George Daniel Lea

The second volume of George Daniel Lea's Born in Blood, a collection of beautiful horror stories guaranteed to burn a hole in your heart.

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN HIGH HEAVEN AND LOW HELL

Born in blood . . . the first breath and all that follow, tainted by original trauma, echoing throughout every thought, every heartbeat; blossoming into more profound pain, until breath and thought both cease . . .
What we grow accustomed to . . . what we can endure:

The days bleed into one another, as we do; hurt defining every moment.

No more. Now, all instants are one; pulsing brilliant, ecstasy and agony, rendered down; experienced in a heartbeat.

Every shame. Every sorrow. Humanity, history. This is what we are; the God we gave birth to.

Better? Yes. Yes. Now, we all suffer the same; no more division; no privilege or powerlessness. We are the same; sexless, skinless, ex sanguine.

And we celebrate, content in our disgrace.