Christopher Ruíz: Fearless but Flawed: The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Horror

Let’s be honest, horror never did play by the rules. And that’s the best thing about it.

You think you’re just in for a scare, a simple jolt, but then it gets under your skin and starts asking questions you didn’t even know were there. It’s subversive like that. It’ll use a ghost as a metaphor for grief or a zombie horde to talk about consumerism, and you’re so busy being terrified you don’t realize your brain is chewing on something real. The genre has this wild, beautiful freedom to break things—narrative conventions, societal norms, your sense of safety before bed. It’s where storytelling goes to experiment, to get its hands dirty.

But.

And there’s always a but, isn’t there? For all its fearless brilliance, horror can be so damn lazy. I didn’t always see it. Took me years to spot the ugly patterns hiding in the shadows. The way it so often codes physical difference as pure evil, a cheap trick that punishes the marginalized and reinforces the very norms it supposedly challenges. It’s a crutch. A bad one.

Then there’s the other stuff. The mean stuff. The scenes that make you pause and think, not about the theme or the character, but just… why? Why is this so prolonged, so graphic, so focused on the mere act of harm? It’s not scary. It’s just cruel. And don’t even get me started on using sexual violence as a cheap plot device, a shock tactic that’s about as subtle as a jump scare in a quiet room.

So yeah. Horror is a mess. A glorious, frustrating, brilliant, and sometimes deeply problematic mess. Let’s talk about that.

The Good: Unrestrained Fearlessness

One of the things I love most about the horror genre is its lack of fear. Sure, its job is to induce fear, but it also serves to challenge sociocultural norms; you know, popular perceptions and the so-called “normal.” Horror is subversive, it always has been. It tackles the taboo in ways no other genre is willing to touch, likely because of the structure of horror. The antagonists (creatures, haunted settings, even humans) are so often dressed in layer after layer of allegory that you sometimes don’t even realize your views are being challenged. Allegorical it may be, the commentary doesn’t even come across as pedantic, as it is so well framed by conflict and terror.

Most importantly, it is fearless in the context of experimentation. Horror has true freedom in its storytelling. It allows for rule-breaking. Hell, there are even expectations of rule-breaking. Horror is where innovation is born, baby.

There is no plot armor in horror, no expectations of safety. Here, protagonists can and often do fail, even if failure is death. This gives the audience a sense of unpredictability that is absent in other genres.

And because it is so unrestrained, so experimental, it can be shifted and molded to fit practically anywhere. Like salt and pepper, it can be added liberally to any dish: comedy, sci-fi, romance … 

The Bad: The Portrayal of “Others”

This is something I didn’t reflect on until adulthood. Perhaps I grew to be a more empathetic person, more educated, more experienced, but I can no longer look past the problematic portrayal of “others.” Specifically, I strongly dislike the lazy, decades-long overused trope where physical differences are used as depictions of evil, where physicality establishes enmity, where “bad” on the outside equals “bad” on the inside. This only serves to further harm the marginalized and, reflecting on The Good of horror, perpetuates negative sociocultural norms (relying on societal prejudices) rather than challenging them.

To the creators and contributors in this genre, you’re better off focusing on actual narrative tension and character development than externalizing “badness” through the freak trope.

On the flip side, I love when this trope is subverted. There is an episode of Malcolm in the Middle that comes to mind in which the boys are rescued from an aggressive security guard at a carnival by the freakshow performers, who are revealed to be well-articulated, kind, masters of de-escalation. And, of course, Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil.

The Ugly: Torture Porn

I’m going to lump a couple of things into what is generally known as “torture porn.” I understand that horror is a form of art, that art is subjective, and that the beauty of art is the individuality in its responses. But, if I could get rid of anything in the genre, it would be harm for harm’s sake.

Harm and violence and the threat of those things is often at the core of so many horror stories. I’m not addressing that. What I find “Ugly” is when these things shift from thrills and chills to prolonged, seemingly unnecessary depictions of pain and violence. I’m talking about those moments when you pause your reading or viewing and think “That’s not scary, that’s just mean.” It’s cheap shock value. There should be thematic depth to any storytelling device, including violence. Torture that exists solely to depict torture does not serve a theme.

Admittedly, I avoid splatterpunk because of this.

Sexual assault and rape as plot devices are a further problem of the genre that I feel should be added to the “harm for harm’s sake” conversation. It’s more shock value, another cheap way to perpetuate ideations of violence against women, as well as feeding the weird “power fantasies” of the misogynistic. Can this type of violence exist in film and literature? Sure, in the right framing. But I don’t think its graphic depiction would ever be missed if removed entirely from the genre.

I’ll add to the above gratuitous animal cruelty. What’s even the point? More shock over substance. Get it outta here!

The Wishing Well: A Collection Vol. 1 by Christopher Ruíz

Step into The Wishing Well, where your deepest desires are granted … and your soul is forfeited.

A horrifying collection of interconnected tales, The Wishing Well centers around an ever-shifting, unearthly bar where desires are commodities and the price is everything. Each story follows a different patron, driven by want, ambition, or desperation, who casts a wish into the bar’s namesake.

Join our patrons as they discover this well is less a cheap gimmick and more a dark conduit for twisted fulfillment, revealing the true horror of getting exactly what you wished for.

In this malignant mess of the macabre you’ll:

Meet “The Captive,” a man who’d do anything to escape his past and present. Anything …

Join a young student who hopes to find happiness once again with a little help from “The Substitute.”

Take a dip in “The Lake” for rest, relaxation, and a final, permanent reprieve.

From a woman’s late-night visit by “The Creeper” to a child’s Christmas visit by something not quite Santa in “The Unholy,” these nine creepy cocktales are served neat by newcomer Christopher Ruíz.

What do you desire? The Wishing Well has what you need …

Christopher Ruíz

Christopher Ruíz is a fiction writer specialising in horror. Born in the City of Angels and raised in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains, he now writes of the demonic, supernatural, and psychological in the Midwest. A veteran of both combat and crisis response, his stories draw inspiration from both the real and unreal, from years of sleep paralysis and nightmares, revealing the darker corners of the human experience.

And the links:

https://www.christopher-ruiz.com

https://www.amazon.com/author/christopher-ruiz

Horror Features on Ginger Nuts of Horror

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