Ah. Fear.
The sudden sensation of having my gut gripped in a vice and lurched up into my throat as I sit in a dark theater. Slowly unclenching my muscles as the credits roll after spending 90 minutes suppressing the most primal of my instincts: fight or flight. Waiting weeks for the tingly tremors going up my spine every time I go into the basement to subside. Waking up in the middle of the night to two teenagers talking outside on the sidewalk and thinking they’re a duo of escaped convicts in my living room. These are just a few of the side effects I get from watching a 90-minute horror flick.
As a boy, I once overheard some kids at the back of the bus talking about A Nightmare on Elm Street. For months afterward I sang “Jesus Loves Me” every time I made the walk from my bed to the bathroom. Herein lies the real lasting effect of horror. It’s simply not a 90-minute “roller coaster ride,” as so many people might say. Your imagination never conjures up a roller coaster jumping out of the closet with a knife while you’re babysitting. Horror sticks with you like an ice pick in your consciousness. Forever.
Ever notice most horror movies only need 90 minutes to mess you up, while most dramas need over two hours to engage you? There’s something unhealthy about that. To people who say horror fulfills a natural desire to get spooked, I say, “Sure, and Red Bull is a natural source of vitamins.” And how old the movie–or the viewer–is has no bearing on whether or not it’s scary. In The Innocents (1961), when the ghost of the butler suddenly glides into the window behind a little boy standing in a dark greenhouse, I popped. I’m thirty freaking years old and later that night, as I tried to go to sleep, I couldn’t convince my adult brain the butler was not gliding up next to my bed.
For all the squeamish whose horror-loving buddies always talk you into midnight shows, quit cold turkey. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is plenty enough for your spook supplement. Want more? Agree to a TBS showing of the original Halloween with all the freaky parts cut out. Dying in a car accident, catching the West Nile virus from a mosquito, finding Mercury behind the furnace, these are all legitimate fears we endure every day without having to lose sleep over whether or not a butler will be floating over me when I open my eyes.
Boycott horror. For the children.
