Difference Between Horror and Suspense

After watching Eagle Eye (see my 9/26/08 post for a review), I got to thinking about the very thin line dividing the horror/chiller and suspense/thriller genres. I had my own answer already but I did some surfing on the interweb to see what others had to say. I also asked my coworker this morning, and he gave the classic "one has gore and the other doesn't" answer. That works for movies released after 1960 or so, but not for the monster movies without blood that came before. My answer has always been that the killers in suspense movies have personal motives while in horror it's more random. That doesn't work for disaster thrillers, which are definitely a subgenre of suspense, but the killers are fire, water, or wind and NOT personal. Legal thrillers don't even have killers sometimes. The best answer I found came from The House of Mirth and Movies blog.

To paraphrase a point from that blog, the main character in a story is the most indispensable one to the story and they are either a threat to other characters or threatened by other characters. If the main character is the THREAT (with interchangeable victims), it's a horror movie. If the most indispensable character is one who is THREATENED (regardless of the threat), it's suspense. My own example would be Alfred Hitchcock's original Psycho versus Vertigo. The former, contrary to ongoing debate, is a horror movie because the main character, the only character for much of the movie, is a threat to himself and everyone around him, and you couldn't tell the same story without him. The latter is suspense because the whole story hinges (pun intended) on the threatened guy with vertigo. Whereas this link's answer makes such morally gray movies seem pretty black and white, it's actually still complicated because the main character can be a threat AND be threatened. Monsters work best when they're slightly sympathetic.

To quote from the link, "unanswerable questions" (horror) versus "dealing with some knowledge" (suspense) goes back to the names chiller and thriller. When you say, "that gave me the chills," you're usually referring to something that's ALREADY been done. Thrills like roller coasters get your heart pumping, and that usually starts BEFORE the ride's done. In other words, horror lasts but suspense will pass. The two might may seem to be in opposition, but they're not mutually exclusive. The best horror movies are filled with suspense and most thrillers these days have more chilling images than they do slow build-ups. While you probably can't separate most movies into just one camp or another, you can separate most movie watchers. There are those who like scary movies and those who don't. I can feel jump scenes coming a mile away and I don't have a problem with gore because my overactive imagination (which I do have) doesn't carry images into my dreams or thoughts on the drive home. What scares me are the "unanswerable questions" that fewer and fewer movies have these days.

But back to Eagle Eye. It kept me wondering what my top thrillers have that it didn't have in the way of tension over action. I never once forgot that I was sitting in an uncrowded theater just watching a movie. So let's do a breakdown of my top ten:

1. Children of Men - from the ringing sound on the opening credits, I've never been so tense in a movie; for a sci-fi concept it seemed so real, the stakes were so high, and there were so many total sacrifices

2. Sneakers - it wasn't just the U.S. government after Robert Redford, it was everyone in power with secrets to keep; in the end it all turned out to be a ruse for a lowly mob bookie

3. The Pelican Brief - now here it was just the U.S. president, but c'mon, isn't that enough? (actually there was a pretty sneaky hitman, FBI, CIA, and ugly lawyers too)

4. Romancing the Stone - the Colombian guy with the cigar was such a great combination of suave and sinister; reference to rape in the intro; a kidnapping; strangers in a strange land

5. Deceived - if only for the scene of the killer appearing in his mother's apartment behind the protagonist; oh, but also the ending when she's pinned against a wall

6. Rear Window - my classic vote; this is pure suspense at its purest

7. The Fugitive - the first thriller to have me at the edge of my seat in the theater; I completely forgot I was watching a movie and thought for days thereafter about being on the run

8. The Departed - like a pressure cooker; first the heat makes you cringe; then for all the steam, it reduces each character to NOTHING

9. Collateral - Tom Cruise as a villain makes so much sense (short man complex; handsome devil); the plot twist, whether you see it coming or not, ties the story together so nicely

10. The Sting - Ocean's Eleven would be as suspenseful if it weren't so full of comedic relief