Monsters are scary, we all know that. Being chased by a zombie horde holds an inherent tension that is easy to sink into. Being tortured is terrifying, being chased or psychologically tormented are clear sources of fear. But what about the horror of the mundane?
But that’s never going to happen to you in real life (probably), which maintains a degree of disconnect. What if we bring the horror closer to home, to a level that is relatable to the everyday? What if the fear comes from your home or your job? What if we make the mundane frightening?
Taking a normal everyday scene or situation and then gradually amplifying the weird details until we swing from ‘odd’ to ‘scary’ can be an extremely effective and subtle alternative to the more in-your-face, traditional horror tales. It’s frequently blended together with other kinds of horror to ensure there’s nowhere for the audience to catch their breath – even the normal parts are scary.
Perhaps the most famous example of this kind of horror is the oeuvre of David Lynch, though he often blends in other, more surreal forms of horror to the weird-mundane. ‘Lynchian’ has come to mean the unsettling juxtaposition of something fundamental and familiar somehow becoming unfamiliar and uncanny.
Lynch, along with a range of other creators, knew how to make what is domestic threatening or oppressive in some way that makes for a discomfiting, unsettling kind of horror. Often, nothing really screams ‘horror’, but as time passes and the surface is scratched, the fear becomes very real. The line between safety and danger is smudged. You’re not scared because there’s a monster (though one might come along later) – you’re scared because there is something deeply wrong hiding inside what appears normal.
Different types of the horror of the mundane
Isolation
Being alone in a familiar setting can really create a sense of terror, especially if it’s cut across with a creepy soundtrack that gives a lot of breathing space to the inevitable unidentifiable noises of the night. A hotel is not inherently scary, but Overlook Hotel, with just Jack Torrance and his family, becomes a chilling, stifling place to be. The slow pace of Jack’s breakdown in The Shining, coupled with the monotony of life and the isolation of the hotel, comes together to create one of the best horror films ever made.
Silent Hill 2, particularly the remake, also lean on the fear of isolation. The empty town, swirling with fog, creates a threatening atmosphere even before the monsters come out. Every day, things like a crackling radio send chills down your spine in this game.
Repetition and Monotony
Chilla’s Art is a Chinese game studio that has perfected mundane horror. Their 2020 game, The Convenience Store, has the player taking the role of a college student working a night shift. You perform routine actions repeatedly – tasks such as stocking shelves or checking the CCTV. Nothing is wrong in the beginning, but the atmosphere is immediately chilling, and the repetition of your chores builds tension in a unique way. The fact that it’s a haunted convenience store is much less scary than the oppressive mundanity.
Perhaps the pinnacle of this, however, is Severance. The windowless cubicle farm setting with bright, inescapable fluorescent lights and the routine office work feels sinister and malevolent. The never-ending monotony and absolute lack of variety is its own form of horror. Repetition without meaning is horror.
This is evident in art as well as media. George Tooker’s Government Bureau depicts never-ending lines of customers at an unnamed government facility, with partially obscured faces of the office workers peering out from holes in the panes, each one freakishly similar to the others.
Uncanny Normalcy
One of the most famous examples of this is the photo Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967 by photographer Diane Arbus. The photo shows a pair of identical twins with identical outfits. However, the girls’ expressions are different, with one slightly smiling and one slightly frowning. Patricia Bosworth, a biographer of Arbus’ said: “The twin image expresses the crux of that vision: normality in freakishness and the freakishness in normality.”
Another well-known example of the uncanny valley is the movie The Stepford Wives. The sense that everything is normal…but not really. Or maybe everything is a little bit too perfect. The horror begins long before Joanna starts to uncover Stepford’s sordid secrets.
Decay or Neglect
There is something inherently horrible about rot and decay, and neglect. The Resident Evil game series uses this to great effect, with fridges full of rotten food, dust, cobwebs, and dilapidated houses all recurring frequently. It’s not the weird plant monsters that stayed with me after Resident Evil 7; it was the dead bird in the microwave.
There’s even a whole art movement dedicated to capturing decay and neglect – the liminal space aesthetic. Empty buildings, abandoned malls, and uneasy transitional areas dominate this movement’s photographs. Isolation within the familiar spaces, usually seen bustling with people, is deeply unsettling.
There are all kinds of post-apocalyptic media that showcases the physical reality of decay (The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, Horizon Zero Dawn, Fallout, Mad Max, the list goes on), but some explore this concept in a more abstract way. The Dark Souls franchise is obsessed with forgetting and the decay of memory, and it’s hard to deny that there is horror inherent in those concepts. It frames time as an inescapable prison, a chilling prospect.
Existential Dread
This is a specific kind of fear – a deep-seated anxiety about life’s most fundamental aspects such as meaning and purpose. Why do we keep going if it will all end anyway? A movie that is extremely well known for its existentialist perspective is Fight Club, the classic that has you wondering – do the things I own actually end up owning me?
Despite its cheery tone, Bo Burnham’s song Welcome to the Internet is also dripping with existential dread. The vast, unending internet, stretching out uncaringly into forever,r is hard to think about too much, and both the lyrics and the video invoke a deep sense of isolation. Browsing is a numb, thoughtless behaviour that can last an infinite amount of time, but not with an infinite amount of meaning.
The horror of the mundane is not loud; it doesn’t jump out from the shadows or scream or attack you. It creeps. It’s slow and patient. It seeps into the cracks of everyday life, perhaps unnoticed, and creates a pervasive sense that everything is just a little bit off, even if it looks fine on the surface. It is routine turned malevolent.
Unlike monsters or gore, this kind of horror doesn’t fade when the screen goes black or the book closes — because it comes from the same places we return to every day: our homes, our jobs, our reflections in the mirror.
It reminds us that the most terrifying thing might not be what lurks in the dark, but the quiet, steady erosion of meaning in the light.
Featured image credit: Warner Bros.
Student journalist & freelance writer. Check out Quick Play, where I review video games that are 10 hours or less.
