King’s (2010) three basic elements in reference to Korean horror film: Peninsula (2020)
Stephen King is a master mind behind horror fiction and one of his greatest abilities is that he can manifest the fear of the reader and create it into a work of fiction (Stobbart, 2017). King states in his book that “The good horror story about the Bad Place whispers that we are not locking the world out; we are locking ourselves in with them” (Rowe, 2019). King explained that there are three levels or elements known that produce a well written horror narrative in a novel or film that strikes fear in its audience. (Suderman, 2017).
The first level which is said to be the lowest of the three is the gross out. (Regal, 2019). This represents the parts of the narration that are gruesome, revolting and gag worthy when experienced by the audience/reader.
In the movie Peninsula (2020) The gross out is amongst the scene I identified as the Ship scene: South Korea is infested with a virus that creates zombies and so survivors escape to a large ship. One of the people are in infected in the lower cabins and kills, bites, infects the remaining people inside. People transform into zombies, their bones breaking back to front and they jump on others as if catching prey like a lion. The room is covered in blood, the snarls and sounds from the zombies and the way they look is terrifying.
The second level is the horror, initiating fear into the audience with something unbelievable or unnatural. (Regal, 2019). This could include sound, lighting, speed features or incredibly well thought camera angles within a film. This level is meant to put the audience in a mindset of struggle and make it difficult for them to comprehend what is going on. It looks for phobic pressure points. (Rowe, 2019).
In the movie Peninsula (2020) the horror I recognised was amongst the Arena scene:
A Korean man who was sent from Hong Kong to collect money from the zombie-invaded abandoned Korea is attacked by zombies and ambushed by unknown survivors. The man is taken to the base where the survivors are and is beaten, screamed at and treated like bait. The men write the number 61 on the front and back of his body in red spray paint and he is thrown into an arena with other captured men where they fight for their lives against zombies for 2 minutes. This scene was disgusting to watch as the men outside of the arena appeared to be animals, they were more hostile and threatening than the zombies.
Finally, the third and worst level is the terror, the reader or audience is provoked into using their own imagination to grasp what might happen and what is there. (Regal, 2019). Terror exploits the way the human mind in a physiological way. (Suderman, 2017).
This element gives the audience control to visualise what they believe the unknown is. This is the most terrifying as the individual will picture something that is truly petrifying to themselves. King states that terror is the most interesting yet hardest to execute appropriately making the audience/reader feel a tense sense of discomfort. (Fables, 2018).
In the movie Peninsula (2020), I believe the terror was represented through the suspense and survival scenes. The suspense was repetitively terrifying because I didn’t know where and when the zombies would jump out at the camera. The fight for survival and the relentless horrifying obstacles that refrained the survivors from being saved constantly gave me the chills. Unfortunately, I don’t enjoy horrors myself and the timing of Covid19 and watching this movie truly provoked me to imagine disturbing zombie outbreak endings for us here in New Zealand and to me this was terror.
Ultimately, the three elements are needed to create an authentic horror narration. The gross-out, the horror and the terror all contribute to creating fear, chaos, turmoil, disease, loss and disarray to the reader or audience. In Kings book he explains, “I recognize terror as the finest emotion…and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find I cannot terrify him/her, I will try to horrify; and if I find I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.” (Rowe, 2019).
Reference List:
Duran, M. (2016, October 31). The Real Horror of Lovecraft’s Cosmicism. Retrieved September 06, 2020, from https://www.mikeduran.com/2016/10/31/the-real-horror-of-lovecrafts-cosmicism/
Fables, J. (2018). R/horror – Terror, Horror, Grossout – Thoughts on Stephen King’s 3 layers of horror? Retrieved September 06, 2020, from https://www.reddit.com/r/horror/comments/8vjucp/terror_horror_grossout_thoughts_on_stephen_kings/
Kim, Y. (Producer), & Yeon, S. (Writer/Director). (2020). Peninsula [Motion picture]. South Korea: Next Entertainment World.
King, S. (2010). Danse Macabre. Everest House.
Regal. (2019, August). Stephen King’s 3 Levels of Horror. Retrieved September 06, 2020, from https://www.regmovies.com/static/en/us/blog/stephen-king-3-levels-of-horror
Rowe, B. (2019, May 11). Why Stephen King’s ‘Danse Macabre’ is the Ultimate Love Letter to Horror. Retrieved September 06, 2020, from https://medium.com/read-watch-write-repeat/why-stephen-kings-danse-macabre-is-the-ultimate-love-letter-to-horror-282e455c8f27
Stobbart, D. (2020, July 20). Stephen King: A master of horror who finds terror in the everyday. Retrieved September 05, 2020, from https://theconversation.com/stephen-king-a-master-of-horror-who-finds-terror-in-the-everyday-83758
Suderman, P. (2017, February 07). Stephen King’s hierarchy of scares remains the best explanation of how horror movies work. Retrieved September 06, 2020, from https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/7/14492124/stephen-king-rings-horror-movie-scares
Pop Genres 2020 