Commentary: The Pacing Problem Of Horror Television
by Frank Martin
Writing a horror movie that is both original while also keeping the audience engaged is a difficult task. There’s a certain pacing to a horror movie involving kills and tension that rises to an inevitable climax. But trying to transfer that stylistic convention into a television series is even more precarious. Despite the growth of long-form storytelling in TV, these series are still not organized like movies. They still have their own storytelling beats for a serialized format, where every episode has to have its own pacing and plot points. So for a horror series that has to have an escalating level of tension over ten or more episodes, it’s quite difficult, as evident with Chucky and Scream.
Despite being spin-offs from successful horror film franchises, Chucky and Scream are actually quite different. Chucky is both a reboot and a continuation of the series while Scream is a completely original story separate from the films. Nevertheless, both shows can be used as examples of the tight-rope walk that is horror television. There are essentially two sets of pacing going on at the same time. Each episode has its own while the season itself requires a certain speed. Problems arise when marrying that to the genre.
Horror stories rely on death to increase suspense. So every episode has to build up towards the episode’s closing moments. An action series won’t run into the same problems doing this because the story isn’t dependent on the death of a character. Horror is. So it’s hard to have a cast that’s either constantly being killed off or incapacitated in some other means. Plus, every episode has to up the thrills, so by the end of the season, the story just becomes completely bonkers — as seen in Chucky when multiple killer dolls are introduced on screen. Scream has the same problem as a season’s worth of horror-esque twists can become quite ridiculous by the end. This doesn’t mean the shows aren’t entertaining or good horror. It just means fans have to expect a different style of horror storytelling than what they may be familiar with from the films.
Chucky is streaming on Peacock. Scream is streaming on Netflix.
