Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 From the Semantic to the Somatic: Affective Engagement with Horror Cinema
- 2 From Identification to Embodied Spectatorship in the Found Footage Horror Film
- 3 Camera Supernaturalis
- 4 Perception and Point of View in the Found Footage Horror Film: New Understandings via Deleuze’s Perception-Image
- 5 Horrific Entwinement: Affective Neuroscience and the Body of the Horror Spectator
- 6 What Hides behind the Stream: Post-Cinematic Hauntings of the Digital
- 7 The Evolving Screen Forms of New Media Horror
- 8 The Embodied Player of Horror Video Games
- 9 The Spectator-Interactor of Virtual Reality Horror
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - The Spectator-Interactor of Virtual Reality Horror
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 October 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 From the Semantic to the Somatic: Affective Engagement with Horror Cinema
- 2 From Identification to Embodied Spectatorship in the Found Footage Horror Film
- 3 Camera Supernaturalis
- 4 Perception and Point of View in the Found Footage Horror Film: New Understandings via Deleuze’s Perception-Image
- 5 Horrific Entwinement: Affective Neuroscience and the Body of the Horror Spectator
- 6 What Hides behind the Stream: Post-Cinematic Hauntings of the Digital
- 7 The Evolving Screen Forms of New Media Horror
- 8 The Embodied Player of Horror Video Games
- 9 The Spectator-Interactor of Virtual Reality Horror
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I pick up the black headset, attached to the computer by a knot of cables, and slide it over my eyes. Headphones cover my ears. Wearing both, I feel a little like I‘ve slipped under the surface of some obsidian lake, into dark water. I press play.
The darkness dissipates, replaced by a gauze-like film covering the only light source. I hear distant footsteps, but also something much closer. It's approaching from in front. I hear its heavy breath and instinctively hold my breath … then the gauze is withdrawn, the blindfold removed. Immediately there is a sense of presence to this world: visually, aurally, bodily.
My first instinct is primal, to observe my surroundings for threat. Freed to look in any direction, I peek over both shoulders, up at the roof, down at the floor. I’m in a dark, catacomb-like chamber. Whoever removed my blindfold is now retreating away from me, a shadowy figure. He pauses in the entrance doorway, silhouetted by light, and then closes the door. The experience of these events is unlike watching them occur on a screen – instead, I am in this space, in a moment of encounter.
The sound of slow-running water suggests that perhaps I am underground. Suddenly, unintelligible whispers orbit me, voices without a source. I twist and turn, trying to pinpoint their origin. They fade away.
Time stretches as the water continues its gurgle. The stasis is broken by flashing fluorescents, illuminating the room in blasts of white. I can now see that I am in the centre of what appears to be a circular room, with four arched doorways leading to a larger surrounding chamber. My reconnaissance is interrupted by what the strobing light suddenly reveals – a woman, in the chamber with me, facing the wall.
As the light flickers and strobes, she disappears – and reappears fractions of a second later, closer now, facing me. Approaching, and then retreating. She lurches and trembles. The light continues to obfuscate her movements. The whispers return, ominous and threatening. The light goes out …
When it returns, they are screaming at me – not just one woman, but three, madly shrieking.
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- Information
- Affective Intensities and Evolving Horror FormsFrom Found Footage to Virtual Reality, pp. 171 - 199Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020