Watching Scary Movies

Note: This post includes light spoilers for Scream, The Ring, and Paranormal Activity. Consider yourself forewarned.

I’ve never been much of a thrill-seeker in real life. Excluding a few stand-alone instances like the time I went skydiving, I typically approach my life with an eye toward moderating risk and not making the kind of mistakes that I’ll meaningfully regret if I have the opportunity to avoid them.

I suspect that my risk is aversion is directly connected to my fascination with horror movies.

When I was a teenager, I watched Scream shortly after it came out on VHS. While I’d watched some TV and movies that could be classified as scary before, that’s the first time I recall watching a full, genuine horror movie, and particularly a slasher. In that iconic opening scene, I remember thinking to myself that of course the villain wasn’t going to murder Drew Barrymore, because she was a star and it was too soon, and surely she’d survive until at least midway through the picture. Thus, it was not only visual gore, but the plot twist that caught me by surprise when she was so thoroughly stabbed, slashed, and left hanging from a tree, removing even my suspicion that she’d be hurt, maybe put into a coma, but not killed.

She was dead.

And so a fascination was born. (My budding celebrity crush on Neve Campbell didn’t hurt matters, either.)

Scream was my gateway horror flic, and a good one because so few of the horror movies I consumed in the months to follow really compared--I Know What You Did Last Summer felt like a humorless, less clever sibling picture, and entries from the Friday the 13th series that I caught on cable never really captured my imagination.

As I got more solidly footed in my teenage years, and all the more so when I went to college, I experienced more horror movies, some good, some bad. The next to really grab me was The Ring. Truth be told, I didn’t know what kind of movie I was going to when I set foot in the theater, but rather went because a girl I was on the cusp of dating invited me to go along, and I don’t know that there’s any movie I wouldn’t have gone to see in that context.

Purists will tell you this film pales in comparison to the Japanese film that inspired it and, truth be told, and I’ve talked with plenty of people over the years to follow who acknowledge it was a good enough movie, but don’t hold it in near the regard that I do. Just the same, for whatever combination of factors like personal mood, and the heightened sense of being on what might have been the precursor to a date, watching The Ring felt both immersive and terrifying on a level I had never experienced before and don’t know that I’ve experienced since at the movies. In particular, the image of Samara climbing not only up her well, but through a television screen at the climax of the movie stuck with me as one of the most captivating and horrific visuals I’d ever encountered--the kind of visual that stuck with me and continued to scare me for years to follow when I was a little tired or creeped out or otherwise susceptible to eyeing my own TV suspiciously, for fear someone or something might crawl out of it.

My interest in horror—particularly new horror—waned in the years to follow, not so much out of fear as aesthetic. At this juncture, the Saw and Hostel franchises took center stage in popular horror, and I just wasn’t into them, finding their proclivity for torture and grotesque violence less interesting, or even scary, than off-putting. It’s well and good to experience the escapism of a vicarious scare, but the physical and psychological torture engendered in the films didn’t offer me anything of interest.

So, I thought I was more or less done with horror, until I watched Paranormal Activity. I watched it via bootleg on a friend’s big screen, the night after I’d moved into a new apartment. As if it were a reactionary response to Saw and films of its ilk, Paranormal Activity reveled in the slow escalation of suspense and in simplicity. Sure, it was filmed on a shoestring budget, to more readily explain why it had to scare in that style. Just the same, it was an old-fashioned style of horror storytelling that drew me in with a payoff that satisfied me in its own internal logic.

And, like Scream had me closing the blinds and reticent to answer the phone when I was home alone, and like The Ring had me cast a wary eye at my TV screen, Paranormal Activity seeped into my psyche long after I’d finished the movie. Particularly in my new living space, in which I wasn’t yet sure which creaking floorboards or refrigerator motor sounds or shadows against the wall to ignore as routine and easily explained away, Paranormal Activity’s scares—in moving shadows and slamming doors resonated.

In my fully conscious, rational mind, I didn’t take these scares too seriously. But in my heart of hearts, when I was alone long after dark, I could start to believe again.

When I was studying at Oregon State, one of my mentors, Nick Dybek talked to us about one of the pleasures of reading, and by extension consuming virtually any media, was the opportunity to gain vicarious experience without any real danger. The message stuck with me, and I feel it applies directly to my interest in horror, and why I still make a point of it each October to seek out at least one horror film I haven’t yet experienced. Sometimes the scares are silly, and it’s a catch twenty-two that if a good horror film is doing it’s job—if the scares capture my imagination and stick with me—then I might live in fear for the days to follow the film. Just the same, it’s an appealing kind of fear. An intellectually safe fear, a chosen fear, and a fear that means I’ve consumed a good story.