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Reply Subj: Re: Sounds like a good read to me. Posted: Tue May 10, 2011 at 02:58:55 pm EDT (Viewed 769 times) | |||||||
Quote: If you haven't seen it before, I do highly recommend you watch "The Frighteners" by Peter Jackson. I think its probably the closest to the mix you're suggesting. It was something of a flop at theaters, in no small part due to that mix of tone between comedy and true horror, but it has a fair amount of fans who find a lot to admire in it, myself included. The story is about a personable paranormal investigator played by Michael J. Fox who runs a con on the small town where he lives. It's not that he isn't psychic, rather it's that he's working with a crew of humorous ghosts to haunt people and then offer his services to remove the offending spirits. However, a truly monstrous spirit begins to prey on the people of the town, and what started out looking like a "Ghostbusters" kind of comedy goes to some really dark and scary places, while still maintaining a kind of pulp/comic book feel. I think it would be worth your time to watch and reflect on what you felt worked for and against a proper balance between all of the elements in it. As for myself, I rate it highly although some of the humor isn't to my particular taste, but I feel the overall story is really well done, and I attribute its failure at the box office to the studio having no idea who to sell it to or how to sell it (people going into it based on the trailer below likely were scared and disturbed far beyond what they were expecting.) I believe the whole film is on YouTube if you can't find it elsewhere. So I took a break to walk the dog around the block after writing this, and it was still running through my mind. What's interesting about the structure of this film is that it has the feel of being divided into three acts, each in their own genre: Act One, the comedy: They wacky hijinks of Michael J. Fox and the dead, along the tone of Ghostbusters or Beetlejuice. Act Two, the comic book adventure: There's an evil cloaked figure preying on the innocent, and our hero has to come to terms with the fact that, with his powers, he's the only one with a chance to stop it in a climactic battle. Act Three, the horror film: It's not that easy as the horror stands revealed. To finally put an end to it will require our protagonists to take a mind trip through a chilling mass murder while scrambling for their lives through a dilapidated abandoned hospital. It's definitely an interesting attempt to get from "Beetlejuice" to "The Shining" by transitioning through a hero film on the way. I think "Buffy" handles things by keeping to the first two acts and foregoing the third entirely... Had the battle between Michael J. Fox and the Reaper character resolved the matter, then it would have fit well within the tone of your average Buffy adventure (and probably had a much greater chance for being a commercial hit.) Jackson, however, pushes further into unsettling territory, and there's a decided tonal shift as the monstrous spirit casts off the more theatrical, comic-book appearance into something more grounded and disturbing. I think the film loses a segment of the audience that was not prepared for an actual horror film to break out of this comedy-adventure they thought they signed up for, and I think horror fans didn't show up to the theater at all after the trailer suggested it was a toothless zany comedy. These kinds of tonal transitions are easier to pull off in prose than they are on film, no doubt, as I find that the readers inject their own preferences and expectations of tone onto the characters and events to even out the overall work. There's less worry that an actor will play a part too broadly... The same scripted opening interaction between Urthula and Vinnie could be interpreted as witty, understated banter or broad sitcom style delivery depending on the actors and direction of a film, either one likely to upset the total balance of the piece. However, in the reader's mind these things tend to smooth over just fine as they form an evolving expectation of tone over the course of a work rather than a knee-jerk reaction to the first scene. It's a fairly interesting challenge to go from one extreme to the other... I look forward to seeing you tackle it. | |||||||
