The Final Act | Does The Horror Genre Have an Ending Problem?

[00:00:04]There's this quote by Huxley that I was thinking about, and I'm sure I've got it wrong, and I should have actually researched that before I press record, but it's something to the effect of the unknown is infinite, but the known has limits. I think that sums up the state of horror quite quite well.

[00:00:27]Hey, what's up, bookworms? Mike back to you to talk a little horror on the channel because something that comes up quite a bit are the endings of some horror books. Now, I can think of the greatest horror books that I've ever read, and people are still arguing about the ending. I think it could be an ending I love, and I'll have another person tell me they hate it. I could have an ending I hate, and someone else will tell me they love it. And I think that just kind of just sums up the state of endings when it comes to the horror genre. More so than any other genre out there, seems like it's very very hard for horror to stick a landing. We'll talk about why I think that today. Uh if you're a Stephen King fan, what do you hear the most? Uh he can't write an ending. And now, I'm here to tell you I don't think that this is a Stephen King problem. I think it's a genre problem because again, I'm not saying that horror is the only genre out there that can have bad endings. I mean, bad endings have been around since the old times, for sure. But it just seems like this one is the hardest to ever stick a landing more so than any other genre that I cover on this channel. And I got myself asking, why is that, I do think?

[00:01:25]Well, I've got several reasons. We're going to kind of go by them one by one here and talk about why I think that horror really does struggle to stick the landing on an ending.

[00:01:34]Let's begin with there's no ending that will please everyone. I think this is a This is a layup, right? If you've been here a while, you've heard me say this before is if the ending has everyone dying, well, hey, it's just it's too nihilistic, right? If the heroes win, it's uh it's satisfying, but unrealistic. It's just a little a little too neat, definitely. And then if it's ambiguous, well, I need a resolution.

[00:01:54]So, there There no way to get out of it.

[00:01:57]You have to write an ending and almost never does it please everyone. And I think it's like cuz readers they want their pound of flesh, right? But they also want evil villains, you know, but they want their protagonist to be likable, to be someone that you root for. They want them to be saved. So, it seems like there's no real wiggle room here. And I think that it's being able to pull off both of these things is very, very hard. You It's hard to have very likable protagonist that you're rooting for, that you're scared for, that you want to see make it, but also be like but I love these villains so much. There's such a fine line to walk for a horror author there. But I think when it comes to an ending is you have to pick one here. You either take the happy ending, which isn't going to go over well when you're reading horror.

[00:02:38]Obviously, people expect bleak things.

[00:02:40]Uh if you have the bleak ending, well, that's a little too bleak. I need some hope in my life, right? But then if you just try to say, "You know what? I'm going to take the easy way out. I'm just going to kind of leave it up to your imagination." or just not explain it, that makes no one happy. Like almost no one is ever happy with an ending. You have a few people who will put on like the the black sunglasses and be like, "Well, you just didn't get it." You know, I think that there is room for that out there, but I think with that with this you got to pick one and it's very, very hard for authors to stick that landing. And I think a big reason, obviously, my second category here, mystery is scarier than explanation.

[00:03:13]Obviously, what makes this genre so great is that the reader is constantly asking, "Why is this happening? How can we defeat this monster? Is this thing killable? Is this house haunted?" These are all questions that that make this genre powerful. The powerful question, "Why is this happening? Is this happening?" You know, that's usually how it starts at the beginning. But I think it's why the escalation of a horror book is the best part of it because you're asking questions. The reader's imagination is doing all the hard work.

[00:03:44]That's That's That's it's it's hard because no other genre I feel like you're doing that where you're obviously you're you're imagining your mind, "What is this awful, awful thing and how scary can I make it in my mind? If I'm thinking about myself in that situation, what am I imagining? I don't get that when I'm reading a 14th century medieval Europe book, you know, I don't get that historical fiction, I don't get that with fantasy, I don't get that really with sci-fi. Maybe sci-fi you get like, what's the alien look like or something like that. And then you start getting into, well, that's a sci-fi horror, that's a different conversation, but I feel like the author eventually, they have to stop escalating and give an answer. And that's where things start to go south. It's usually it's usually nowhere as scary as what a reader has kind of imagined in their mind, right?

[00:04:24]And I think with any other genre, yeah, okay, that explanation, I'll take that.

[00:04:28]I had no idea what to expect of the evil dark one, you know, in the final palace in the final battle. It wasn't quite what I imagined, but hey, I'm going to roll with it. But with this, it's like I've imagined something so scary and then you just give me something either twist or or something just completely just out of nowhere. It doesn't ever really satisfy anybody and I think that's why this genre does struggle there. And that leads me to the monster.

[00:04:49]What's the big one? Don't show the monster. I think with this is this is horror has it so much better than everything else in this regard. Because you think about any other books that you read, you want to know about the bad guy and you want to know more about the bad guy and you want to know why they're doing this. But when you get to a horror book, you can know absolutely nothing going in the last 50 pages about this dark entity and you're fine with it, you're rolling with it. You maybe you don't want the explanation because that's when everything usually goes south. Think about the scariest parts of Jaws.

[00:05:20]It's really, really scary before you see the shark. Oh look, I'm going to be honest, it's scary when you see the shark, too, but the scariest parts of that movie when your your imagination's running wild, you have no idea what is doing this, why is it doing this, what does it look like, what Oh my god, it's like the darkest fear I can imagine. Is it actually a shark? Is it a big sea monster? You have no idea. That's the stuff that makes it really scary. And I think it's like the haunted house before it gets explained, the serial killer before their identity gets revealed.

[00:05:43]Once you explain or you show that monster, it loses all its mystery and it's just not quite as scary. It Once it shows its weakness, you're just like, "Huh, I was kind of expecting more." Before you were afraid of Pennywise, it was a big intergalactic space spider. It was a lot scarier as a 10-ft tall scary clown with razor-sharp teeth that could turn into anything that it wanted to, right?

[00:06:02]That's much scarier than having it explained to you. So, that goes back to the great villain part. What makes a great villain? Not showing it to you.

[00:06:10]And that's really, really crazy cuz I don't feel like any other genre really can get away with that. At least not as easily.

[00:06:16]So, you think that's a good thing, right? Well, no. Then you get to In the third act, everything changes. That's what always seems to What do you hear the most about a horror book? It was really good till the last 50 pages, right? Cuz that's when the author decides they have to give you answers and everything twists. It turns into an action movie, basically. Set up as psychological horror. Why is this happening? Is this really happening? And then you got your middle, it's a mystery where your protagonist is trying to figure out how to fight back, how to get out of the situation. And the third act, like I said, it's basically either an action movie or a fever dream or there's some big crazy twist ending or something, you know? Uh the monster wasn't really a monster, but he was actually a serial killer. That's That's That's an old classic. I mean, that one just seems to never go out of style. Uh the haunting wasn't actually ghosts. Our protagonist was just He was a schizo.

[00:07:02]It's all going on inside their head.

[00:07:04]Something like that. The real monster was just childhood trauma and addiction.

[00:07:08]These are things where it's always like, "Really? That's it? What a letdown, right?" That's always going to let a reader down. And the real monster not being what you thought it was going to be. Rarely does a horror story end the way that you've imagined it in your head. It's It's It's really, really just a shame. And you think about any of these horror stories you're talking about where they they they feel like there's something different. They There's almost no horror book I've read ends basically in the same tone that it began. I mean, even think about like The Exorcist, which I think is one of the scariest books ever. It's much different ending. Obviously, you end on a very, very different note than you begin because you have to. You You to have some kind of resolution or else it's just like, okay, so we just went 80 mile an hour car chase and we just ended with an 80 mile an hour car chase. We never really got to know what happens when the car chase ends. That's the only analogy I could think of on the fly.

[00:07:53]But yeah, it's uh it's never going to kind of be the same as it started and that's just a genre problem. That's not a Stephen King problem. Like I'm not sticking up for Stephen King. He's wrote some stinker endings. I'm going to be honest with you. Favorite author ever.

[00:08:05]He's wrote some endings that let me down. Needful Things, amazing amazing book. Five-star book. Two-star ending.

[00:08:10]Yeah, it really really was.

[00:08:11]>> [laughter] >> That's going to start a different a different conversation, I think. Watch that review if you haven't yet. And I think uh a big category here would be unlike most genres, uh horror readers all want different things because uh I think with sci-fi and fantasy readers, you can find big big portions of the readers who all want the same thing.

[00:08:30]Horror, I think there are subgenres for subgenres and that's what makes it so unique. See, myself, I prefer uh coming of age while the protagonist is being stalked by something supernatural.

[00:08:42]That's my genre. I love that. Give me more of that all the time. I never want it was actually a serial killer. I never want, "Oh, it wasn't actually ghosts. It was all going on their head." I never want that. I want it to be a monster of supernatural origin and it preferably someone going through coming of age because coming of age is my favorite, you know, subgenre of all fiction.

[00:08:59]Adding it into a subgenre horror, perfect perfect marriage right there.

[00:09:03]But yeah, someone else are going to want body horror. They're going to want tons of gore. They're going to want buckets of blood, right? And others are going to want allegory for some repressed childhood trauma, something like that.

[00:09:12]Next person might want someone being on the trail of a serial killer that was never caught or whether it's a who done it or, you know, exploring dark family history. There's something for everyone here because there's just so many things. There's something scary to everyone, but there's no one thing that's scary to everyone. And so that's what makes this genre so different than everything else. And that be being the fact that there is so many different things for everyone, you are not going to find an ending that pleases everyone.

[00:09:38]That's really, really tragic because readers, we want I mean it's just naturally, we want everything explained to us.

[00:09:45]But with horror, once you explain it, it's not scary anymore. Once you take away the mystery, and it's definitely usually almost always not what you were hoping for it to be, yeah, you're going to feel a little bit let down, right? So, to me, horror is usually about a theme, right?

[00:10:02]I think books are rarely about the big hairy monster. I mean, we want them to be, but they almost never are, whether it's personal inner demons or some kind of story or some some theme about like how humans are the ones who actually hurt other humans, not the monster or something like that. You think about like Henry Bowers in It. You know, sometimes he might be scarier than Pennywise in many regards cuz he could get them, you know, whether they were together, whether they were alone, whether they believed or didn't believe.

[00:10:24]None of that, you know, that was what made him scarier than Pennywise. But most of it's usually about something deeper, you know, trauma, loss, addiction, family, guilt, all of it.

[00:10:35]There's always something and the monster is just he's just a messenger. That's just the person that is delivering the message to our protagonist, you know, of one of those themes that we're talking about. The characters are usually damaged as hell before the bad thing happens. That's what draws me to the genre. I love damaged characters. It's not the big scary monster that really draws me. It it is, but again, I think with all these there's always some kind of underlying theme to the story and that's what makes our characters have their character. I'm seeing these characters work hard, dig themselves out of a hole, and overcome these things potentially is something that really, really brings me to the genre, but it can also chase a lot of people off because I just talked about what kind of horror there is that I like. I'm sure there's someone else watching me saying, "Oh, no, I don't like none of that. I like this." Because that is what makes this genre special is that it is just so many things because there's nothing is no one is scared of the same thing. I mean, you might all be scared of spiders. I'm scared of spiders, you know. Most people I feel like are probably scared of spiders or clowns or something like that. So I'm saying you do have big swaths of groups that are scared of a particular thing. But there is no one thing I think that scares everybody. You know, I mean, maybe like a loss of a child or something, but that's getting really really heavy for a conversation like this. But I think you understand what I'm talking about, and that's what makes this genre so special, but also so incredibly unique to where it's going to make us always almost never agree on the ending of one of these stories. Now, if I have a final thought on this issue, it's just that I feel like more so than any other genre out there, I always hear how disappointing endings are. Like uh last year I really got into the readings of Ronald Malfi, an author I really really have clicked with. And besides people saying, "Hey, talk about someone besides Ronald Malfi." I'll just bring up some points here. Almost every single one of those books I talked about, you would have someone in the comments saying, "It was really good until like the last couple chapters. I didn't like the ending." That I feel like I get that so much more than I do with fantasy, so much more than I do with sci-fi, thrillers, drama, anything else. I hear about the ending really letting people down when it comes to horror. And so I said, "I think it is a genre problem because there's just no way to please everyone with this." It's just that classic thing I always say, "When you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one." That's truer than any other genre when it comes to horror because I think there's no singular horror ending that's going to send everyone home, I don't want to say happy, but satisfied. There's never ever going to be an ending where everyone's like, "Yeah, that was great. That's exactly the way that should have went."

[00:13:01]You're always going to upset someone.

[00:13:03]And it's it's just it's you're chasing you're trying to open Pandora's box or trying to build Sauron's ring without it actually, you know, you you know you can't do that because you're never going to be able to please everyone with this.

[00:13:13]So, I think I would ask, are horror endings are they really worse than every other genre or does it just create situations where the ending could never actually satisfy the reader? I think it's more that than anything else. You know, it isn't that that horror authors are bad. It's not that horror authors they write horror because they're not good authors. They don't know how to write endings. I think it is a genre thing. It's definitely not the authors.

[00:13:37]I mean, for me in the end, I mean, a horror novel the purpose of it isn't to scare you while reading. It's that you're scared to turn that light off when you put it down. That's what horror is to me. It's never about the ending really. It's a vibe. It's an atmosphere.

[00:13:51]It's a a group of friends. It's a survivor. It's the last girl. All those things are what brought me to the genre, not the ending. Those are all way more important to me than the ending. I can have a satisfying ending, but if I don't have those things that I love in the genre, it's like who cares if the ending was great.

[00:14:07]That's just my personal opinion, but again, I know with horror you're going to have a very very different opinion than me on that. So, uh I don't know.

[00:14:14]With with me your mileage is going to vary on this because we all love different types of horror if you love horror at all. I mean, I don't know why you'd watch this far in the video if you're not into horror at all. But do you agree with me? Do you feel like that there any other genre out there that I've read, I can't think of one that I get more feedback from viewers about how they hated the ending or they were let down by the ending or they were disappointed in the ending or it's just a back and forth of people who just was divisive. They some love it, some hate it than horror. There is no other genre out there where I feel like the ending pleases people less than horror. And again, I don't think it's an author problem. I don't think it's a Stephen King problem. Think it's a genre problem. That's just something with it cuz I mean, you hear that not just with books. I mean, you hear it with with horror movies, too. Oh, yeah, I loved it, but I hated the ending. That's that's what you're going to hear constantly. So, I guess I would ask you a final question here. What is your favorite horror ending?

[00:15:05]Cuz I promise you if you tell me, you're going to get a reply of someone saying, "Oh, no, I hated that ending." Because it's just the way it goes. It's It's absolutely just the way it goes.

[00:15:15]And again, I'm not saying that none of these other genres have bad endings. I mean, I've read some really rotten endings in fantasy and sci-fi. I absolutely have, but I've never seen as much divisive opinions as I have on horror books, especially Stephen King books. Obviously, I talk about Stephen King a lot here, so I'm going to hear about horror endings, but it isn't just Stephen.

[00:15:34]Like I said, you can look at movies as well. Any horror story, I feel like there's always going to be people who are disappointed, and it's going to be more people disappointed than not, cuz it's just incredibly rare to find a way to stick the ending uh stick the landing on an ending in a horror book, and it's going to please everyone. It's it's virtually impossible. Now, if you want to drop in the comments, let me know one that you think would please everyone, I would love to know, cuz that feels like chasing the holy grail right now. I can't think of anything. Like I said, I just mentioned The Exorcist. You'll have someone say, "Oh yeah, the ending sucked." You will absolutely have that.

[00:16:06]Talk about it. I mean, I think that's the number one comment on well, besides, you know, that one thing in It. The other The second most popular comment is always like, "Well, you know, once you learn about Pennywise, it's just not that it's not that interesting anymore, right?" That happens with just about everything.

[00:16:22]So, when people always want to put that on Stephen King, he can't write an ending, I say read some of Stephen King's books that aren't horror, and I think you'll actually find that he does write good endings. It's just a genre problem. So, does it sound like I'm standing up for Stephen? Maybe, I don't know.

[00:16:35]>> [music] >> Uh I'm not really trying to. I mean, I I hear this about Dean Koontz, too, but I wouldn't know. I've never read Dean Koontz.

[00:16:41]>> [laughter] >> I'll leave it at that, guys. Why don't you go ahead and drop in the comments?

[00:16:43]Let me know a horror ending that you did love. And you know what? Go ahead and tell me one that you hated, as well. I think that there's plenty of room conversation, or tell me why you think it is that horror just cannot stick the landing, and I will talk to you there.