The WTF? Book Club discussion

While I have read various pieces of horror fiction over the years, I have frequently been plagued with the question as to wether Horror fiction can ever be truly scary or if this is something which can only be achieved by horror cinema?

Cinema naturally has the advantage of being an experience which works on several levels, with the combination of imagery and sound which when done well can prove a devastating combination, even more so when the audience is not being bombarded with graphic scenes of gore. Prime examples of course being both "Psycho" and "Halloween" which both featured minimal gore and whose sound design actually intensified the scares with many movie goers watching the films with their hands over their ears.

On the flip side, is it not the images that we create in our own mind which are the scariest, especially when we are able to conjure up images that even the bottomless pockets of Hollywood would struggle to bring to life on the screen, frequently leading to disappointment from the interpretation of popular horror fiction.

Discuss

It depends on the type of definition of horror that you look at. Psychological & extreme violence often works better in books, American Psycho being a prime example. But gore & ghost stories lend themselves to the audio & visual experience of cinema, The Ring being a good example of this. At the end of the day though so much of the so called "Horror" genre is cheap & ineffective on the written page & the silver screen that class will always shine through & only the best will unnerve, unsettle & upset us enough to be called truly scary instead of just attempting to shock.