Horror movies, the good ones at least, are about more than what they seem. The surface story is a metaphor, usually for some social issue or some emotional aspect of human nature. David Kessler, the protagonist of John Landis’ screenplay An American Werewolf in London, is not just a man who changes into a wolf every full moon; he is a man struggling with mental illness and trying to maintain his grip on reality. He does not even change into a wolf until the second half of the second act (Landis 52-53). Up until that point he is in a hospital, trying to recover, physically and emotionally, from a brutal attack that killed his best friend. However, disturbing nightmares and visions of his dead friend cause him to question his sanity. Essentially, when he finally turns into a wolf, he is giving into his delusions and they become real and, ultimately, consume him.
Commonly, the first act of a horror movie will do two things, identify a threat and present a laundry list of characters to become victims in the second act. In the second act, secondary characters are picked off one by one until only the protagonist is left. The third act is a face off between the protagonist and the threat, a killer or monster, whatever the case may be.
Landis uses the customary three-act structure in An American Werewolf in London. However, he makes a departure from the traditional horror movie formula. Landis’ first act does not stray too far from the formula, a threat is definitely identified, in the form of a “wolf monster”, but it is killed at the end of the first act (15). The significant departure is that no laundry list of potential victims is given; instead most of the first act is dedicated to establishing and characterizing the relationship between David and his best friend Jack. This supports the second act premise that David is hallucinating from grief over Jack’s death.
The second act is where Landis makes his greatest departure from horror tradition. As mentioned earlier, David does not change until the second half of the act; therefore, he kills no one until halfway through the screenplay. Instead, horrific images from his dreams set up the carnage that is to come. The second half of the second act is simply one sequence after another of David in wolf form stalking and killing random victims. If Landis had spread these scenes out and interspersed them among the scenes in the first half of the act, the screenplay would have a more traditional structure but it would not support the subject as well as it does. As it stands, the screenplay depicts David succumbing to one night of madness in the second act and the third act is devoted to how he deals with what he has done. If the killing took place over a spread out period of time, the sense of madness would be lost and the urgency of David’s reaction the next day would be weakened.
A horror movie must have scares. If it does not the audience will be disappointed. The challenge of the horror screenplay is to communicate these scares to the mind of the reader. That is where style comes in. The screenwriter uses stylistic elements to set up the scare and to carry it through, or to build tension then release it. Landis has a unique way of doing this. He builds tension until the end of one scene and releases it the beginning of the next, then starts building it again.
The best example of this is at the end of the second act, when David is on his full moon killing spree. The wolf monster is stalking some derelicts outside. Landis builds tension by having one of the derelicts’ pet dog sense the wolf monster and bark and pull at his leash, then run off. The derelicts look into the darkness, tension building. “They strain their eyes – something is approaching them. They can just make out its size” (Landis 58). The scene ends with the dialogue “Mother Mary of God” (58) then cuts to “A train SCREECHES to halt. (A scare.)” (58). The actual scare, where the audience is supposed to scream and throw pop-corn into the air, is not until the beginning of the next scene and Landis labels it with a parenthetical. The label is necessary because the scare depends on a loud sound, this is a cue to the director about how these scene interconnect that might not be obvious from simply reading the action.
An American Werewolf in London is an excellent example of how a screenwriter can use conventional storytelling elements, common to all forms of writing, to create something that stands out as unique and unconventional. This is an important lesson for any screenwriter but especially for anyone writing in the horror genre, which is overrun with bland, unoriginal storytelling that relies heavily on formula.
What other horror movies defy convention while remaining true to the genre? How so?
~ Jon Lucas Murphy
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