On Horror Fiction and The “Ick” Factor

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As a kid, I was absolutely terrified of horror flicks. Not an uncommon stance to have, really, but a lot of that was due to a pair of twenty-something uncles with nothing better to do than sit me and my cousins down to watch said movies just to gauge our reactions. My cousins? Much braver than I was—if you could even see me since I was probably long gone before they even pressed play on the VHS player.

Aging myself.

Later in life, I was able to embrace a lot of the genre on my own terms. A lot of that came with discovering movies and books on my own that appealed to me. So, when I sat down to write my first YA Horror novel with the express purpose of trying to bring that first, healthy dose of ‘ick’ to readers, I decided to go to the movies that evoked those great reactions you’d get with a crowd or a group of friends.

That said, there was a low bar of difficulty in finding the ‘ick’ when one is writing a book where roaches serve as one of the primary elements of spookiness. It was tempting to simply write all the details that would give folks immediate heebie-jeebies (and don’t worry, I did), but there had to be a little more. The supernatural elements of the book begged for more pop. The themes did as well. All that thinking and brainstorming of scenarios made me realize exactly where I had to go back to find inspiration for the scenes in INFESTED.

Body horror. The ultimate in ‘ick’ factor. The place where the squeamish wince and the aficionados cackle maniacally. It’s a genre of horror that has a huge place in my heart because I was initially introduced to it in very wrong way but fell in love with it once I was able to explore it on my own terms. So what I aimed to do with INFESTED was to write a horror novel for younger/newer readers of the genre that could use an intro course. I wanted to be the gateway to the more extreme – that first taste if you will—since I never really had that opportunity.

Now, INFESTED may be meant to be a little more of an intro to a wider world, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t draw inspiration from the more mind-bending and super gross genre pieces I was exposed to. Here’s what helped inspire the scenes in INFESTED that I’m hoping readers won’t forget (and I’ll avoid spoilers here, since where’s the fun in spoiling the gooey bits?). There are also plenty of books out there, but I decided to stick to movies since the list is shorter. If you are looking for phenomenal examples of the best writing in the genre that inspired me, look no further than Clive Barker, Jack Ketchum, and Paul Tremblay.

On to the flicks.

“They’re Creeping Up on You!” – Creepshow (1982)

An absolute staple of my weekend TV viewing, Creepshow was a flick I’d never seen uncut until I was well into my 20s and WOW, what a difference from watching the censored version on TV. In this story, a germaphobe zillionaire begins to find roaches in his hermetically sealed apartment after a business rival commits suicide. I won’t get into the specifics, but the final shots of this story are some of the absolute most influential to a lot of the grosser moments in INFESTED. Hopefully, I will leave a few mental scars at the same level that were left on me when I finally saw the full version of this short.

Naked Lunch (1991)

One of the many, many movies I picked up once my mother gave me free reign with the Blockbuster card, Naked Lunch was 1) not at all what I expected and 2) not at all appropriate for a twelve-year-old to watch. Based on the novel by William S. Burroughs and directed by the legendary god of body horror, David Cronenberg (don’t worry, he is very much on this list again), Naked Lunch was a movie I wasn’t prepared for and one I would revisit multiple times before finally reading the book. Now, I can’t say if I “love” either, but the imagery in both and the sheer insanity of some of Cronenberg’s images, especially a beetle typewriter, inspired me as I wrote INFESTED.

That said, I was only ever interested in the movie to begin with because Peter Weller starred in it and I was a huge Robocop and Buckaroo Banzai fan, so I’ll own that.

Mimic (1997)

My first exposure to Guillermo del Toro’s work and, to me, a sort of hidden gem of a sci-fi horror flick, Mimic’s imagery was a definite influence on the way I envisioned the villain of INFESTED, Mr. Mueller, as I began writing the story. While, my final story wouldn’t go as far as del Toro’s imagery, I don’t think INFESTED would have been the story it was without those pictures in my head. We may not have man-sized roaches in INFESTED, but the monsters of Mimic were an influence on the final product that I cannot deny.

The Fly (1986)

Mr. Cronenberg returns with one of the movies that consistently stays in my mind with the 1986 remake of The Fly. The practical effects of this film are unmatched and the themes of metamorphosis and man’s descent into savagery were very much on the front of my mind when I started to write INFESTED. What do we become when we give in to the impulses that were inside of us all along? What happens when we become a physical manifestation of our greed or our anger or our loneliness? Movies like The Fly are great because you can take them at face value and revel in the shock horror and gross-out scenes, but the thematic elements are what make horror such a wonderful genre. The Trojan Horse concept of hiding very serious themes within the shock always spoke to me and I very much wanted INFESTED to explore the concepts of colorism, gentrification, and anger through the lens of the horror story.

Apt Pupil (1998)

Sometimes the “ick” factor doesn’t have to be physical; it can be spiritual. When I first pitched INFESTED, I used Apt Pupil as an example of how I wanted to explore the social issues in the novel. With a villain who very much is an example of the very worst of us, INFESTED is meant to be the story of a young man at an impasse. He’s not entirely sure who he is just yet and the decisions he is about to make may not necessarily brand him for life, but they will dictate the path he takes. I wanted to use a villain who could be very much like Pupil’s Dussander (though, I wouldn’t go as far as to make my protagonist, Manny, as awful as the movie’s lead, Todd Bowden). Projects like Pupil, though, go to show that horror doesn’t have to be visceral to weigh heavy on the audience. In INFESTED the horrors of Mueller’s actions in the past have more weight than his state in the present day of the novel, and I wanted to make that very clear: the sins of this man’s past are just as bad as his present.

If there’s anything I hope anyone can take from INFESTED, young or old, it’s that horrors come in all shapes and sizes. From the lowly roach to the virulent racist blowhard to the latte-sipping gentrifier blissfully unaware of the impact of their existence.

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