{"id":203,"date":"2019-01-28T01:50:49","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T06:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/?p=203"},"modified":"2019-01-28T01:50:49","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T06:50:49","slug":"the-creation-of-horror-a-head-full-of-ghosts-vs-the-exorcist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/2019\/01\/28\/the-creation-of-horror-a-head-full-of-ghosts-vs-the-exorcist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Creation of Horror: A Head Full of Ghosts vs The Exorcist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Tremblay’s a Head Full of Ghosts<\/u> draws a lot of imagery and description of possession from William Friedkin’s 1973 The Exorcist. <\/em>This is not surprising in any way given how prolific the movie is in the horror genre and especially that of possession-based movies. In this post, I am going to explore the relationship between the two specifically regarding the narratives and the effects they have upon inflicting horror.<\/p>\n

The key difference in A Head Full of Ghosts <\/u>is that there is an immediate family surrounding Marjorie and the story is told from her sister Merry\u2019s point of view. This establishment of a family and specific use of Merry as the narrator produces what feels like a much more personal story. As readers we are inside her thoughts and her childhood memories so everything, we perceive of Marjorie\u2019s situation is from the perspective of a scared little girl deeply empathetic to her older sister. In my opinion, this grounds the story and makes it more relatable to the audience and as such helps to make it more horrific and terrifying. We are not terrified simply due to the visual description itself but having the commentary of Merry upon the events take it to the whole other level making it scarier.<\/p>\n

On the other side, the horror from The Exorcist <\/em>appears to be built upon sheer grotesqueness and graphic imagery. The only true support system that poor Regan has is her mother Chris who, while excellently played by Ellen Burstyn, is more difficult to sympathize with and is less of a grounding mechanism. In addition to keeping things grounded and relatable, which I assert to be the key between an audience and a piece of work, the special effects do not do horror any justice. While the graphics are very dark and scary in terms of what they are depicting, they are also out of this world and something that is simply not grounded. Sometimes the effects do not hold up well and it is at these moments when the viewer is taken out and less horrified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Tremblay’s a Head Full of Ghosts draws a lot of imagery and description of possession from William Friedkin’s 1973 The Exorcist. This is not surprising in any way given how prolific the movie is in the horror genre and especially that of possession-based movies. In this post, I am going to explore the relationship …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-c"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paB9Ga-3h","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}