Girl in the Red Dress- The Impact of Fear

Paraphrasing a quote from renowned author Stephen King, he tries to terrify the audience first, but if that doesn't work, he tries to horrify them, and if that won't even work, he goes for the gross-out. You can tell he definitely prefers terror over all, and I can see why, as it's very, very effective at scaring the living daylights out of people. But wait, aren't horror and terror the same thing? Nope.

Horror and terror are different from each other. Horror is the fear of the known, like escaping a masked killer. It causes fear, but it's much easier to resolve and watch out for, and possibly learn their weakness/es. It's a fear you can beat with a baseball bat.

Terror is the fear of the unknown. This kind of fear strikes much deeper than horror. You can see and understand what you're horrified by, you can't see or understand what you're terrified of. It confuses and scares you, and you can't predict what's coming next, leaving you with many questions and no answers in sight.

Which brings me to the short film we watched early on in this class, Girl in the Red Dress.

That minute of a little girl dancing in slow motion with a ghostly superimposition of herself staring into my soul while distorted noise plays still boggles my mind to this day. I don't understand it. I don't get what it means, and frankly, the dominant feeling of true terror makes me not want to get it. It could mean something about death, life, innocence, I don't know, and I don't really care to know, because I'm rarely so taken aback by something like this. It's so subtly shocking and creepy. It's fascinating how freaky it is.

...I should stop writing before I become redundant. In conclusion, terror is so much more impactful if I can still feel disturbed by a piece viewed over a month ago.

Not the best example of a terrifying thing, but I do like this drawing.
I've got better and creepier pieces somewhere else.