A nice little survey of what makes things effective. I think Jesse's death wasn't ineffective so much as it was just so early and we had so little information about Jesse that it just wasn't the same. Joyce and Tara we knew. Jesse was a hardly known.

I know I felt for Xander when it happened. I just couldn't put "best times" montage together in my head so I had to guess Jesse was very important to him.

azzers | November 02, 01:27 CET

The Reavers are my number 1 scariest characters. I can't watch Serenity when I am by myself at night.

latinandgreek | November 02, 12:08 CET

Some of Hammer's most disturbing films were the most tragic ones; Curse of the Werewolf, Castle of Blood, The gorgon. Likewise an Italian piece of garbola called Slaughter of the Vampires and Robert Quarry's follow-on to his Coutn Yorga two-play, Deathmaster. Because of personal prejudices, I won't mention NothLD.

It ties into the broader field of suspense and melodrama in general. One of the reasons the end of the Roaring Twenties is so powerful is because on a certain level, even tho we know he's extremely guilty and deserves whatever he gets, we also care somewhat about Cagney's character.

DaddyCatALSO | November 03, 02:00 CET

Well it's a laudable stab at a comprehensive round-up of what makes horror scary though to me a few of them basically boil down to "Horror is scary because it's horrifying". Not a lot new there. It also mixes up sadness and poignancy a few times, they're related but slightly different, poignancy being a sort of subset of sadness IMO.

And it'd be hard for me to disagree more about 'The Road'.

Saje | November 03, 08:08 CET