Glossary
Practical effects
Anything achieved in front of the camera. The argument for them is physics, not nostalgia.
Practical effects are achieved on set rather than in post: prosthetics, animatronics, air bladders, stop motion, forced perspective, squibs.
The case for them in horror is usually made as nostalgia, which is the weakest version of it. The stronger case is mechanical:
- The actor is reacting to something that physically exists in the room.
- Light falls on it correctly, with real shadows and real subsurface scattering, because it is a real object.
- Fluid has weight and behaves like fluid.
That is why body horror is the subgenre where the difference is most obvious, and why The Thing (1982) still works while its 2011 prequel does not.
None of this is an argument that digital effects are useless. It is an argument that they are the wrong tool for something the audience needs to read as having mass. The best modern horror effects work is a combination, with a practical element on set and digital cleanup afterwards.
See the practical effects shelf.
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