These Monsters Are Not Very Scary

I finally got around to reading The Hunger Games* and was in the middle of it when I saw io9's spoilertastic post on movie concept art for the muttations. "So cool!" said I, getting excited, and teleidoplex told me that I would be sorely disappointed when I reached that point in the books.

I blew through the last 40% of the book or so yesterday, and I have to say: yes, yes I was. ( cut for spoilers )

That's my real problem with this specific subgenre of horror, be it zombies or werewolves or what have you. The person is turned into a monster OH NOES HOW HORRIFYING. No... not really. Zombies aren't that scary. I had a talk with a friend about how zombie stories scared her, and I felt meh about them. "But... if you die you'll become a zombie!" she said, aghast. "So? I'll be dead, wtf do I care? It's not like I'm there to be aware of it. My zombie is someone else's problem." This reasoning gave her pause, because she never thought of it that way. Aside from worrying about friends, I don't really care about my corpse after death-- zombie, in a hole in the ground, it's all the same, isn't it? You're not there to think about it. Zombies are scary for the survivors, but as a monster and potential end? I don't feel much horror. They don't come back to haunt the survivors, not even in a twisted sense-- a monster that's still someone turned against the survivors, with all their intelligence and personality but wrong. That would be so much scarier, because it leaves a possibility of awareness, of moral questions, of whether the survivor's friend is still in there. God. I love those stories. And they so rarely come up. It's always "my friend came back as a dumb husk that wants to kill me!" It's not your friend, put a bullet in their head already.

I feel similarly about werewolves, except the horror felt is slightly different. The werewolf is still a dumb animal, lacking any of the benefits that come from being human, but at least there's the horror that comes the morning after. Still. I feel a distinct apathy about the traditional werewolf. Yawn, dumb aggressive monster. Whatever.

I want to see smarter monsters! Monsters with dubious morality! Monsters that maybe could be your friend again if only you said the right thing! (But of course, you can't, because they're totally twisted against you and they're monsters, c'mon. Though "converting the monster" is another trope I love.)

This monster trope always feels so... hollow, to me. That spark of dread I'm supposed to feel just isn't there.

*I haven't read much at all because I've lost a good reading groove. Law school totally threw me off, and as soon as I had time to start reading again during 2L year, I'd moved and set up new routines and couldn't really find a way to fit books into it. I guess I never technically stopped reading because I still read a fair amount of literature online, but I don't feel like a "real" reader if it's not something physical. I guess. But I started taking my Kindle to the gym and it was the magic bullet to get me both reading and working out.

**( cut for worldbuilding discussion of THG )