Weirdly, it was something inane that may have put it in my head: this past Friday, being the 13th, the healing angel and the ninja girl and I decided to watch Friday the 13th, which none of us had ever seen.
What we discovered was that all the deaths in that first film take place in complete isolation. Each death happens in isolation and is unremarked, and each person heads into his or her own death without knowing what's happened to any of the others, and consequently they have no fear whatsoever--until seconds before they're shot full of arrows or have their throats slit, etc. And this made it all--at least for us (perhaps a jaded audience? too 21st century? dunno)--very un-scary. It was only when you got to the sole survivor, who discovered the other bodies, realized there was mass murder going on, that we started feeling some fear, because she was scared. She knew she might die at any moment, and she was (understandably) frightened--and watching her fright was frightening.
... Okay, you know what, I realize that's actually pretty much the inverse of watching people running ecstatically toward death, and toward a death that you've created. Instead of pain and regret at being the cause of death you can't stop and that the people themselves go running toward, all unawares, in this case you've got gruesome deaths that have no ability to terrify precisely because the victims go into them without fear, all unknowing.
no subject
What we discovered was that all the deaths in that first film take place in complete isolation. Each death happens in isolation and is unremarked, and each person heads into his or her own death without knowing what's happened to any of the others, and consequently they have no fear whatsoever--until seconds before they're shot full of arrows or have their throats slit, etc. And this made it all--at least for us (perhaps a jaded audience? too 21st century? dunno)--very un-scary. It was only when you got to the sole survivor, who discovered the other bodies, realized there was mass murder going on, that we started feeling some fear, because she was scared. She knew she might die at any moment, and she was (understandably) frightened--and watching her fright was frightening.
... Okay, you know what, I realize that's actually pretty much the inverse of watching people running ecstatically toward death, and toward a death that you've created. Instead of pain and regret at being the cause of death you can't stop and that the people themselves go running toward, all unawares, in this case you've got gruesome deaths that have no ability to terrify precisely because the victims go into them without fear, all unknowing.
[sorry so many edits; disordered thinking...]