There’s no worse feeling than being the only one laughing in a room, though being the only one not laughing isn’t much better. When we screened Buster Keaton’s 1926 film The General, while I did laugh at times, I was mostly on the edge of my seat. I knew going into the film that all the stunts were performed without any special effects or safety mechanisms, and that really made the whole experience different for me. It honestly made the film a bit scary.

For my video essay, I wanted to strike at the core of this reaction. Why did I find The General scary?

I didn’t want this essay to be a purely personal exploration of how my brain works, so instead, I aimed to answer why The General could be scary. I already knew that the stunt work was a huge contributor to this, but it wasn’t until I thought about the film in a modern context that I realized it went a lot deeper than that. I realized the film has a similar plot structure to most modern thrillers. It’s a scary story on paper but played off for comedy.

I then thought about films that also fall under that category of thriller comedies, and Home Alone immediately came to mind. This raised another question: Why doesn’t Home Alone scare me? Well, I figured the stunts in The General being raw was the biggest difference, and likely the answer I was looking for.

It wasn’t until a week ago when I was watching Jackass with my friends that the complexity of The General really hit me. Jackass features injury around every corner and no special effect, just like The General, only the stunts are disconnected and actually hurt the men in the film. With this disparity in mind, I rewrote my script to focus on how the jokes in The General work and how they create tension. Overall, I’m pretty proud of the final product. I put a lot of thought into the flow of my video essay, as I wanted to make sure it never got boring. I didn’t want it to be a slog to get through; I wanted it to be energetic and genuine, much like Buster Keaton’s films.

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