How Dorothy Kickstarted My Horror Obsession

I can pinpoint the moment I fell in love with horror movies. Six years old, sticky fingers from sweets, in the cinema with my Mum and Dad. We were watching Return to Oz, directed by none other than the editing legend Walter Murch. What my Mum and Dad (and probably Disney) hadn’t banked upon was that this would be a much darker journey over the rainbow than its predecessor. 

For those of you who haven’t seen this cinematic wonder, I’ll fill you in: Dorothy can’t sleep and keeps obsessing over the land of Oz, so Aunt Em decides the best course of action is to send her to a hospital to receive electroshock therapy; a hospital that also houses a basement full of 'damaged' children from failed experiments. Fun for all the family. Dorothy is rescued by a mysterious girl, one thing leads to another, we’re back in Oz and the real horror begins. 

When the plot introduces evil Princess Mombi, I was confronted with a terror I had never known. The sequence sees Dorothy stealing the powder of life from beside the sleeping Mombi’s decapitated head (she happens to have 30 other beautiful heads on standby, taken from the residents of Oz). At the last moment, the head wakes up, letting out a terrible wailing scream “Doooorrootthyy Gaaalllle!” Mombi’s headless body suddenly rises from its slumber to booming music. All the other heads start screaming, the headless body thrashes down the corridor and I was out of my seat shrieking. The tension had been unbearable. The fright coming at just the final moment was exquisite. I wanted to run from the cinema, I had never felt terror like it. I have been searching for that same feeling ever since. 

Not long after this I had stumbled across The Watcher in the Woods starring Bette Davis. Another Disney horror movie - for kids. I had been transfixed by a scene in which a girl vanishes during a seance-gone-wrong in an abandoned church. The,, slow low-level creepiness and the haunting subtlety hooked me in. There was no going back now, I was that weird kid who was all about horror. A strange side note - I had rewatched this recently whilst having a fever and decided to watch the 1963 The Haunting right after. I noticed a bizarre door knocker in both movies and later found out that they had both been filmed in the same location, Ettington Park. Spooky. A very weird coincidence… 

Since then I’ve watched every great, and not so great, horror movie I can. I’m always looking for that thrill of fear, that flawless application of tension and dread - as an editor it can be hard to take off your edit head and allow a movie to wash over you. You know the tricks. So when a movie comes along and you don’t see it coming, it’s fantastic. 

Of the classics, it’s the strenuous, perfectly composed moments of dread that still haunt me to this day. The nightmarish longshots and horrifying jump cuts to the dead Grady Twins in The Shining. The slow-building psychological tension of Don’t Look Now, lurching toward an unforgettable finale that seems to come from nowhere. The tragedy of Carrie and its opening sequence (one of horror’s best), shot in a dreamy slow-motion that descends into a nightmare, spurred on by the terrible human nature of frenzied teens - beautifully crafted by editor Paul Hirsch. 

Within that dreadful tension and expectation of terror is the horror of what we don’t know, can’t see. We’ve recently experienced a new golden age of horror, and the genre’s finest moments in recent memory draw on this fear. The Babadook returned us to the old adage that the worst monster is the one you don’t see (Cat People did this very well 40 years ago). That same idea is of course used in Blair Witch which was fantastic fun, but As Above, So Below dragged the found footage concept down to a new level… a further eight levels of hell. 

During lockdown we were treated to Host, a fantastic modern take on the genre that cleverly utilized its weaknesses as its greatest strength. The empty screens you get from a zoom call, the darkness in a doorway behind a character, the freezing and the static all lead to a very modern ghost story. Barbarian starts off one thing and ends another - two different horror tropes that blended together seamlessly. The perceived threat of Bill Skarsgard is tense enough but then the introduction of Mother… chef’s kiss. Hereditary shocked audiences with the death of a main character I had thought to be the villain from the trailer - fantastic misdirection. It was a shock I hadn’t seen coming, and then more followed. And more. And more. 

But it’s not just the shock that I’m searching for. The horror edit is more than just the jump scare. It’s the slow tension, the empty spaces, the long shots that should have already cut, the ominous integration of sound design. Saint Maud gave us all this - everything coming together perfectly to fill you with dread. Speaking of dread, no movie in recent memory encapsulated that emotion more than Eden Lake, which was driven by a rising tension toward a truly horrifying finale. I’ve only watched that one once and shan’t again. Not good for my blood pressure. 

I’ve never been one for bloody gore and violence - I mean I love the Hellraiser and Nightmare on Elm Street movies of course, but torture porn holds no interest. It’s the fear of what’s hiding in the dark, the slowly lurching terror, the monster awakening - that’s what I want. Rosemary’s Baby gave me more dread, fear and paranoia than any slasher film ever could - not to dismiss the subgenre and all its beloved tropes, Halloween will always be the pinnacle of slasher movies, that soundtrack, the edit, the performances, one of our first final girls. Well, that was until Scream came along and rewrote the genre. I remember the shock of seeing Drew Barrymore killed off before the opening titles. Iconic. 

The final girl has always been my favourite horror trope, especially since we’ve managed to escape the virginal good girl stereotype and see stronger female leads with more power to feminism. Hello Buffy Summers, I love you. But my favourite final girl will always be the one who first introduced me to all these feelings of dread, fear and terror: a simple girl from Kansas who can lay siege to an entire kingdom with a chicken. What a movie. 

Darren and his dog Ernie hail from North Wales. Represented by Final Cut, Darren has worked with some of the industry’s most prolific directors, including Dave Meyers, Autumn DeWilde, Mert & Marcus, David Sims and Vincent Haycock. His flare for capturing beauty on screen is evident in his work for Versace, Just Eat, Mango, Calvin Klein, H&M & Uniqlo. 

Check out Darren’s work here.