Jacob Babb
For a couple of decades now, horror has not been afraid to go meta. Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) and its subsequent sequels popularized the concept of characters being familiar with the tropes and conventions of horror films and using their horror knowledge to help them survive. Of course, as Murray Leeder notes, Scream was hardly the first example of such self-reflexivity, pointing to how Fright Night (1985), for instance, exhibited both self-reflexivity and nostalgia through its “intricate construction of the past explicitly related to the past of the horror genre” (190-91). Even Craven’s own New Nightmare (1994), released two years prior to Scream, used self-reflexivity as a motivating force. However, it is certainly undeniable that following the release of Scream, countless horror films and novels unfold in worlds inhabited by primary and secondary characters who draw on their horror knowledge to face evil, from the rules-based narrative of Zombieland (2009) to the recent spate of horror novels that center self-aware final girls, perhaps best exemplified by protagonist Jade Daniels in Stephen Graham Jones’s My Heart is a Chainsaw (2021).
In a similar way, and more broadly, horror has often explored the precarious nature of creativity. Stephen King’s oeuvre alone provides numerous fictional examples of writers dealing with different kinds of struggles, whether in the form of alcoholism in The Shining (1977) or an overzealous fan turned captor in Misery (1987), just to name a couple. In horror, the imagination can be the source of inspiration for supernatural killers like Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Horror has also imagined those who create horror, as in John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness (1994), which shows the cosmic horror that a genre writer can unleash through the work of successful novelist Sutter Cane, whose initials phonetically resemble those of our own famous horror novelist. For a more recent example, Philip Fracassi offers in Gothic (2023) the concept of a writing desk that leads a flailing horror writer to tremendous success, but at a terrible cost.
This essay examines the overlap between horror’s turn toward meta-awareness as a form of self-reflexivity and the genre’s exploration of the drive to create and to sustain that creativity. Such overlap provides a fertile space for horror literature to grow narratives rooted in knowledge of the filmic and literary traditions of horror that use the anxieties of creativity as a catalyst for terrifying events. I focus on two recent horror novels that bring these elements together as contemplations of the challenges of creating horror: Scott Thomas’s 2017 Kill Creek and Brian McAuley’s 2022 Curse of the Reaper. Both novels follow protagonists who are concerned that they have lost the spark that made them successful horror creators: Kill Creek’s novelist Sam McGarvey is suffering intense writer’s block, while Curse of the Reaper’s franchise actor Howard Browning faces the decline of his career, as a new actor steps into the iconic role that he once inhabited. In each book, creativity becomes a source of anxiety, both because of the fear of its disappearing and, paradoxically, because of the fear of unintentionally unleashing evil on the world through the very production of horror.
Horror as a genre is often driven by anxiety, whether it is about what is waiting under the bed or what is hiding in our heads. Kill Creek and Curse of the Reaper both point to anxiety about creativity itself and about the act of creating horror. In his overview of the horror genre, Stephen King argues that the human imagination fixates on mortality: “The danse macabre is a waltz with death. This is a truth we cannot afford to shy away from” (419). His assertion comes in the context of a broader consideration of the morality of horror, of whether the existence of horror in media inspires horrific events in reality. In the two novels I examine in this essay, King’s observation plays out within the fictional world. In Kill Creek, four horror novelists face an entity that thrives on the kind of stories that they tell, while in Curse of the Reaper, two actors who portray evil beings are subjected to the very evil that they bring to life on screen. Thomas’s novelists and McAuley’s actors waltz with death as they aim to satiate their drives to create, and in doing so, as they summon horrors into their own worlds. The anxiety that fuels each novel’s horror is heightened by the characters’ self-reflexive knowledge of the horror genre itself.
In Kill Creek, Scott Thomas establishes an ensemble cast of characters comprised mainly of horror writers who are taken to an allegedly haunted house by an eccentric billionaire’s son who runs a horror website in order to film an interview on Halloween night. Even the premise of the book roots the narrative in reflexivity, as something of a cross between House on Haunted Hill (1959), with its plot of a wealthy man who lures several people to a haunted mansion with money, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962), building the narrative of the haunted house around a pair of sisters, one of whom is confined to a wheelchair. Thomas utilizes his horror author characters as a means to speculate about what horror is—and why readers are so drawn to—as well as to interrogate how different writers engage in the creative act of producing horror. For example, at the beginning of the novel, Sam McGarvey is teaching an introductory course on horror in popular culture at a university in the Midwest and offering a lecture on the Gothic. Sam notes that “the Gothic has invaded our everyday lives. The infectious evil…has spread to our cities, our small towns, our homes” (10). For Sam, evil has become quotidian and omnipresent, setting the stage for the premise of the haunting of Finch House, which has become haunted because people believe it is haunted.
Through his four horror novelist characters, Thomas provides glimpses into different horror sub-genres and voices that will feel familiar to readers with a good knowledge of horror literature. Additionally, the characters offer multiple opportunities throughout the novel to interrogate the creative urge that drives these authors, even as Thomas exploits those urges as a source of horror in the text. Thomas presents Sam as a mainstream horror author who writes books about small Midwestern towns that conceal the infectious evil that Sam describes in his lecture. However, Sam is unable to write at the beginning of the novel, experiencing severe writer’s block. He nevertheless remains one of the key voices in defining horror. During the interview with Wainwright, the eccentric horror enthusiast, Sam again posits a perspective on where horror originates: “That’s the root of all fear: the loss of control. Not being able to stop the evil” (149). By introducing different kinds of horror writers in the novel, however, Thomas is able to provide alternate perspectives on horror based on some of the genre’s other forms, like splatterpunk. As a representative for the more extreme end of horror, controversial novelist T. C. Moore suggests that horror “no longer goes bump in the night…Horror is perversion” (146). Her novels, with titles like Biter and Cutter, are transgressive, intertwining sexual pleasure with pain. Throughout the novel, Moore challenges the other horror writers because they do not transgress boundaries as much as she does.
The third author, Daniel Slaughter, writes horror aimed at teenagers with the intent of teaching moral lessons. Daniel’s career has begun to falter because his primary audience, Christian readers, have started to question his use of horror motifs as an evangelical instrument. Daniel is portrayed as unserious throughout the book, mocked for his Christian faith and his aversion to profanity, yet his fate in the novel is perhaps the most horrific, as he becomes possessed by the house’s malevolence and used as an instrument of murder and destruction. The malevolent entity that inhabits the house seems to take a particular glee in destroying Daniel’s faith and transforming him into its murderous servant. The last author, Sebastian Cole (repeating the phonetic reference to Stephen King), is presented as the godfather of horror, whose aesthetic is consistently described as “elegant” and who veers more toward the literary than do the other authors. While he is honored by most of the other authors for his contributions to the genre, he fears that he is becoming irrelevant as he grows older.
Complementing the horror writers is the mysterious media mogul Wainwright, who invites the authors to the Finch House in order to film a confrontational interview with them that he hopes will go viral. Wainwright’s interview inadvertently fuels the house, which the novel eventually reveals thrives on storytelling. Much of the novel unfolds after the Halloween interview in Finch House and after everyone returns to their regular lives, although everyone involved soon realizes that the Finch House has had a profound and lingering effect on them. The novel jumps forward six months, as all four writers find themselves feverishly composing novels that are disturbingly similar to one another. Sam goes from being blocked to being compelled to write to the extent that he loses track of anything else in his life, and every time he stops writing, he senses something threatening approaching him: “It won’t like that…It won’t let you rest until you’re back at that keyboard” (216; original emphasis). However, his obsessive writing stops when a character in his novel breaks through a brick wall blocking off a room, very much as Rebecca Finch’s room is bricked off in the Finch House. Sam is instantly consumed by fear that his ability to write—that whatever allows him to create—has finally failed him, and he seeks the other authors out when he learns that they have had similar experiences.
An entity has followed the writers home and is driving each of them to write a novel more or less based on the Finch House. At the urging of his agent, Sam travels to California to see Moore, who has gone into a similar period of frenzied writing, and they learn that they stopped writing at the exact same point in the narrative. They soon seek out Daniel and find his experience similar to theirs. One particular difference is that Sam and Moore have written the books in their particular style, with Sam’s being more midwestern in setting and tone and Moore’s more urban and brutal. Daniel has written the longest version of the narrative, a rejection of his previous writing style. This shift in style illustrates that the house has had a more profound impact on Daniel, who has come to believe that the house was instrumental in his daughter’s death on the same night as the Halloween interview.
The three writers are deeply disturbed by the interruption of their compulsive writing, and they work together to seek answers as they begin to suspect some kind of supernatural influence emanating from the house. They discover that Sebastian Cole completed his manuscript, and that they all stopped writing at the exact moment he finished his book. They all visit parapsychologist Malcolm Adudel, who was the first to write a book about the Finch House. He reveals that “the house needs a storyteller,” and tells them they all belong to the house now, before stepping in front of a city bus, finally freed from his role as the house’s storyteller (285). The writers then return to the house to confront the evil and destroy it. Cole, whose health has improved dramatically since completing the manuscript because the house has selected him as its storyteller, rejects the house’s role for him, choosing death instead. Led by Sam, they all break through the actual brick wall to Rebecca Finch’s room and face the evil, although not without a body count. The house uses the ghost of Daniel’s daughter to force him into a murder spree with a hatchet, turning the troubled Christian horror writer into the novel’s slasher, a man who has succumbed to the house’s evil. And while Sam ultimately succeeds in destroying the house, the novel’s conclusion suggests that the evil entity wins out, finding another storyteller instead. This conclusion expresses a deep ambivalence about the creation of horror, as the entity harnesses one of the writer’s creative impulses in order to survive and thrive, spreading its malevolence by means of horror literature.
While Thomas’s novel explores the creative drives and frustrations of horror writers, Brian McAuley’s Curse of the Reaper looks at the creative energies of actors in films, dividing its narrative attention between two actors who portray the eponymous Reaper, a villain cast from the mold of the great franchise villains of the slasher craze of the 1980s. The Reaper has characteristics that will remind readers of Jason Vorhees, Michael Myers, and, especially, Freddy Krueger, due to his penchant for snappy one-liner puns as he slaughters teenagers. The meta-aware nods to all of these franchise villains generates a sense of immediate connection with the Reaper as McAuley draws on readers’ knowledge to create a fictional horror icon in this novel’s world. The novel focuses in part on aging actor Howard Browning, whose entire career is built on portraying the Reaper in a long string of films that become increasingly silly, like many of the franchise films the Reaper films allude to. He feels conflicted about his legacy, particularly because he sees himself as a serious actor who “had always endeavored to imbue the beast with a certain Shakespearean balance of gravitas and frivolity” (37). Echoing the need of the fading star for a return to glory in Sunset Boulevard (1950) and the rise of the metafictional, reality-blurring new iteration of Freddy Kruger in New Nightmare (1994), Howard is either becoming possessed by the Reaper or having a psychological break because his role has been given to someone else. Despite his own disdain for genre film overall, and his conflicted emotions about his legacy being tied to his performances as the Reaper, Howard is compelled to protect that creative legacy when he learns that a new actor has been cast to portray his iconic role.
The novel’s narrative switches back and forth between Howard and Trevor Mane, a scandal-prone young actor who has been cast as the Reaper to reinvigorate the franchise, as the film’s producers hope that Trevor’s well-publicized struggles with addiction will bring in audiences to watch the franchise reboot. By dividing the narrative between these opposed actors, who both feel an ambivalence toward the Reaper role, McAuley invites readers to empathize with the creative struggles of both. Trevor has no real regard for the franchise or for Howard’s performance as the Reaper, instead looking at the role as a chance to prove that he can be a successful actor. However, he continues struggling with addiction throughout the book, relapsing and eventually presenting a revenge-motivated Howard with the chance to take photos of him doing heroin in his car. While Howard hears the Reaper’s voice in his head, Trevor’s addiction becomes the voice in his head, driving him to make increasingly damaging decisions that culminate in his conflict with Howard, who is now fully in the grips of the Reaper persona.
One of the most illuminating moments in the novel, which illustrates the interaction between genre self-awareness and creative anxiety, is when Howard receives a Lifetime Achievement Award. In an effort to rid himself of the influence of the Reaper, Howard plans to announce his permanent retirement, stating in his speech, “I have shared my mind, my heart, my soul with the Reaper for twenty-five years now. But my term of service has ended” (147; original emphasis). He cites Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Poe’s The Raven in his characteristic attempt to distance himself from the low-brow franchise that made him famous. However, as he speaks, he imagines villains from other franchises laughing at him, “a blank white face…the hockey goalie…a burned face beneath a brown brimmed hat…a sad ghost and a ginger doll,” eventually reaching a crescendo with the Reaper’s cackle (148). His effort to end the influence of the Reaper thus proves fruitless, as he eventually succumbs to the Reaper and inflicts violence on several people in his mission to stop Trevor Mane from taking his iconic role.
Ultimately, Howard’s mission to reclaim the role fails, despite the fact that the Reaper possesses him. He dies at the hands of Trevor, who has also fallen under the influence of the voice of the Reaper. While much of the novel focuses on Howard as he succumbs to the persona of the Reaper—“One last harvest,” as the Reaper promises him (163; original emphasis)—Trevor also struggles with the power of the Reaper’s voice once he assumes the role, as demonstrated through violent outbursts and through a journal, in which he begins to write as the Reaper. The voice eventually tricks him into murdering his girlfriend and then Howard, as he surrenders to the Reaper persona. At the end of the novel, as he fully assumes the role of the Reaper on screen, Trevor hears the clank of the Reaper’s chains, his signature weapon.
Both novels introduce characters who are active participants in the horror genre, either as writers or actors, with extensive knowledge of the genre that influences how they see the conflicts unfolding around them. Likewise, both novels center on characters struggling with creative anxiety, either in the form of Sam McGarvey’s severe writer’s block or in Howard Browning’s signature role being given to another, younger actor. Sam’s creative block is temporarily alleviated by the influence of the Finch House, but there are significant consequences for letting evil in and giving it a voice. Howard works to make peace with the end of his career, but he finds himself unable to resist the murderous call of the beast in whom he invested life. As the writers and actors in these novels strive to create horror novels and films, the creative anxiety that drives them leads them to let horror in, to enact horror on themselves and those around them.
The dark conclusions of both of these novels, driven by the creative anxiety that motivates and haunts the characters, could suggest a moralistic assertion that engaging in the danse macabre is itself dangerous—that creating horror opens the door (sometimes quite literally) for evil to enter the world. The horror genre, which often derives much of the fear it induces from challenges to the status quo, is often a conservative one; however, the element that offers the most resistance to such an interpretation of these texts is the love for the horror genre woven throughout both novels, seen in the frequent nods to horror knowledge shared between Thomas and McAuley and their readers. The portrayal of authors in Kill Creek who resemble beloved horror writers and characters in the real world are lovingly crafted, and even as these authors face terrifying temptations and consequences, Scott’s love for horror and its creators shines through the novel. Likewise, even as Howard Browning slips into madness and Trevor Mane succumbs to addiction as each confronts the otherworldly evil influence of the Reaper, McAuley invites readers to empathize with these flawed characters as they indulge in self-reflexive reminders of the slasher franchises that dominated cinemas in the 1980s. The novels become multi-layered experiences of anxieties about creativity in horror, likely reflecting the anxieties of the novelists themselves.
Yet self-reflexivity in horror is not intended only to explore anxieties about the genre itself. John Hodgkins argues in his analysis of The Cabin in the Woods (2012), a highly intertextual, self-reflexive horror film, that through its “loving cannibalization of horror’s visual, narrative and characterological archetypes…the genre is providing its audience with a useful service…as an outlet for our most vile and sordid impulses” (314-15). Hodgkins’s argument recalls many defenses of horror as a safety valve, giving audiences an outlet for reckoning with and releasing their anxieties. Thomas and McAuley have both produced novels that wrestle with dark creative obsessions, weaving the horror genre itself through the work, and while the books themselves offer no happier ending than The Cabin in the Woods, they both speculate about the importance of creativity for the sake of audiences who want, as King put it, to waltz with death.
Works Cited
Fracassi, Philip. Gothic. Cemetery Dance, 2023.
Hodgkins, John. “Let it bleed: Intertextuality and the Embrace of Horror in The Cabin in the Woods.” Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, vol. 14, no. 3, 2021, pp. 307-16.
The House on Haunted Hill. Directed by William Castle, Monogram Pictures, 1959.
In the Mouth of Madness. Directed by John Carpenter, New Line Cinema, 1994.
Jones, Stephen Graham. My Heart is a Chainsaw. Gallery, 2021.
King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. Gallery, 2010 [1981].
King, Stephen. Misery. Viking Press, 1987.
King, Stephen. The Shining. Doubleday, 1977.
Leeder, Murray. “Forget Peter Vincent: Nostalgia, Self-Reflexivity, and the Genre Past in Fright Night.” Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 36, no. 4, 2009, pp. 190-99.
McAuley, Brian. Curse of the Reaper. Talos, 2022.
New Nightmare. Directed by Wes Craven, New Line Cinema, 1994.
A Nightmare on Elm Street. Directed by Wes Craven, New Line Cinema, 1984.
Scream. Directed by Wes Craven, Dimension Films, 1996.
Sunset Boulevard. Directed by Billy Wilder, Paramount Pictures, 1950.
Thomas, Scott. Kill Creek. Inkshares, 2017.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Directed by Robert Aldrich, Warner Bros., 1962.
Zombieland. Directed by Ruben Fleischer, Columbia Pictures, 2009.
