After a lot of careful thinking, I thought it would be best if I made some slight alterations to the design of the Rubberneck and added an extra prop onto him. The reason for this change was due to the people that I have access to as my actors, as well as adding to the scariness factor. Originally, I had planned to make The Rubberneck a tall, muscle figure that looked intimidating. I figured that his look and intimidation would make the audience tense and scared. However, that design would only make him look like your average criminal/serial killer, and I needed something other than his utility knife that would make him unique and unforgettable. Not only that, but for my available actors, I had only one tall friend that told me I could use him for a role. The problem with that is I needed a tall villain and another tall person to be one of the victims; to be more specific, The Jock also needed to be tall in order for it to be easier for the audience to know what kind of archetype I was going for. The Jock has a dominant aura to him, so the large height would help convey that. Also, girls like tall guys (unfortunately for me), and his tallness would imply to the audience he probably has a girlfriend or is at least popular with the ladies. So, if I were to my friend play The Jock, someone much smaller (and therefore less intimidating) would have to play the killer, and vice versa. For those reasons, I decided to make a few changes to the antagonist in my opening.
As for what I decided to change, I think I am going to give the Rubberneck a more evil spirit presence- something supernatural. Because I could not go for that big burly killer, I'm opting to make the killer seem more child-like than originally intended. Now, the killer in my mind is fairly short (at least than originally intended), wear most likely the same get-up, but this time have him hold some sort of doll on his other hand to enforce that child-like nature of his to the audience. Because the killer will appear to be a kid (I hope), the audience will associate the killer as being some sort of ghost or evil spirit. Kids in horror movies are usually demonic or other worldly, so my movie would not be as realistic as I wanted to, but it doesn't really matter. For the doll, I am going to look around my house for any plush toys that I have lying around that would scare the audience. If I can't find any, I'm going to have to ask my friends if they have one lying around and if they don't, I'll probably just buy one at my local Walmart.
Dolls in horror movies are extremely helpful in scaring the audience. Personally, I find that dolls are really creepy, especially those that are meant to resemble actual human babies. Thinking that they could in fact be alive or at least possessed by some demon really scares me. And horror movies are the reason I hate/fear them. For almost a century, dolls in horror movies have completely changed the way people view toys aimed at little kids. Because of their effective way in making the audience scared of dolls, people developed pediophobia from it, or the fear of dolls. In fact, a 2013 paper by psychologist Frank McAndrew saw that "collecting dolls" was named as one of the creepiest hobbies. A lot of this has to do with the fact that there are actual stories of cursed dolls that have caused misfortunate events on people, such as Robert the Doll. It also has to do with the fact that dolls look too much like humans. Our brains are made to read faces for any kind of emotion, intentions, etc. Look at a doll that looks human but exhibits none of the traits above is quite odd. Either way, scary dolls produce results, so I'm going through this route.
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