The Babadook

It's been a long time since I've seen a horror movie that actually gave me a good case of the creeps.

Mostly, it's because filmmakers don't seem to really know how to effectively make a horror movie. They spend all of their time designing the creature at the heart of the movie--and try to show it in all of its glory as early as possible--and forget about the people the movie is actually about.

That's right. While the movie may be named after the monster, the actual movie is about the people. If you have stock characters getting hunted and killed by the monster, it isn't very scary.

And, granted, that's what people expect nowadays when they see a "scary" movie--one that isn't really scary. Log onto your Netflix account and see how many movies listed in the "Horror" category are also listed in the "Comedy" section. And many of these aren't even parodies.

While you're logged onto Netflix, go into Horror and click The Babadook. That one is right where it belongs. You won't find it in Comedy, unless somebody has made a big mistake.

It's a good old-fashioned horror movie. The central characters are complex and sympathetic--they aren't perfect, but you can honestly say you know people like them. When the terrible things begin happening you are invested in them coming out of it okay. You care what happens to them, and you find yourself hating and wanting to lash out at this awful thing that is terrorizing them.

This movie is an example of my idea that big budgets are a bad idea for horror movies. This one was obviously made on the cheap, so the production had to find inexpensive ways to show the monster, ways that didn't burn through the budget but were still effective.

Those are the most effective ways to tell the story. If you spend millions creating a CGI masterpiece of a creature you want to show it as much as you can. Which effectively destroys any aura of mystery, the thrill and fear of the unknown--we see the damned thing in the first act of the film and, even if it is the scariest looking thing you can imagine, you know longer need to imagine it, so it's not quite as scary anymore.

Lovecraft said the oldest emotion is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. He is dead right. The more your audience learns about your monster, the less terrifying it is.

We can see what the monster does. We can feel its effects. We can hear it, moving around. But we don't know exactly what it looks like, or what it wants, or what it's actually doing. The longer you can prevent anyone from answering those questions, the scarier the thing will be.

And, in the end, don't really have a Big Reveal--show more than you've shown before, but you still haven't shown everything, you haven't answered every question. Which will make your monster scarier than ever.

Watch this thing to see what I'm talking about. Let's make more movies like this, okay?