I'm McGaris and this is post-mortem.

What makes a good horror story?

Well, if you ask me, it's the same thing that makes a good story, just with deeper wounds.

Even though we all have our own individual

nightmares, fear is universal. A good horror story has a sense of reality and

emotional connection to the characters and a bravery to confront that which makes us afraid

very afraid. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Good horror is good drama

plus fear and dread. To me, all good art is personal.

It reflects a life lead.

So many fear films are all about the tropes,

the effects, the gore, the screams and the jumps,

that we forget about what is at the base of them and that is the

fear of death, of dying, of pain.

The best writers and filmmakers in the genre draw from that personal pain, not from other movies and books and art.

And the most potent pain comes from the heart.

It comes from experience outside the movie theater.

Reading Stephen King and Clive Barker, watching films by Hitchcock and Cronenberg and

Friedkin and Craven, and so many of the rest, you can feel the veracity of the pain at the center

of the fear.

It comes from moving through life with your eyes and ears and heart open.

Travel, fall in love, have your heart broken, lose people who were close to you.

Yeah, it hurts, but it deepens you if you let it. It's no fun at the time, but it gives

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