Dark Time
The unseen horror villain
Time is an underrated antagonist in the horror genre.
Two of my favorite horror movies — Happy Death Day and The Final Girls — use time loops to hinder the protagonists as they try to survive a killer. In Happy Death Day, Tree is forced to relive her birthday where she is murdered again and again as she seeks to unravel the identity of her killer. The Final Girls traps a quartet of friends inside a slasher movie where they realize they must defeat the killer to avoid being trapped in an endless time loop within the movie.
Time can be an obstacle hindering the protagonist’s survival while also being a vehicle for character development. The crypt keepers here at Macabre Monday are dying to know — what is your favorite horror story where time is an obstacle or antagonist? If you write horror, has time itself ever taken on an adversarial role in your own stories?
Now, without further ado, onto the latest edition of the weekly digest:
The Weekly Digest
A selection of last week’s memorable Macabre Monday offerings:
A man gets more than he bargained for when he meets a mysterious woman at a bar in Tattoo, a microfiction tale from
.
A train derailment is just the beginning of a horrifying ordeal for badly injured survivors in Eyes on the Side, a dark new tale from
.
A man’s idle wish takes a nasty turn when a dark entity threatens his family in the fourth episode of
’s The Hawthorn Tree series.
A door seemingly opening by itself sets the stage for There is Nothing, a short creepy tale from
.
Finally,
gives us Longing, a dark, twisted tale of love and longing going from this life to the next.
This makes me think I need to utilize time more as an antagonist! Sometimes, it can be the character's friend as well. For example, if they need to stall someone while they wait for a rescue, or just to extend their next moment of survival. The most recent example that comes to mind in the antagonist role is the movie Don't Move, where time is very much the enemy. The main character is injected with a paralytic agent and she sets a timer on her watch to track when she will become immobilized, which really adds to the tension. At certain points, however, time turns into the ally again when she waits to regain function.
Thanks for sharing this with us