Writer's Block: Scary movie

[cupcake_goth]

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Ahahaha. I love the horror genre; you people know that, right? Some of the movies that I find comforting in times of emotional distress include things like 30 Days of Night, Jennifer's Body and Zombieland. But. I am kind of a big wimp about suspenseful horror. Gore, monsters? Great, bring it on! Creepy suspense? I will cower behind clovisdvlbunny while watching, and not sleep because of being freaked out.

So, I have two answers for this question.

Scariest horror movie #1: Poltergeist. I have not seen this movie since ... the late 80s. This movie terrified me so much when I first saw it that I didn't sleep for three days. (Of course, that may have had something to do with when, on the way home after seeing it, Dad asked me what I thought the scariest part was. I answered "The clown doll,", because even then I Did. Not. Like. Clowns. My Mom replied, "But you used to have a doll just like that! I think it's in the attic ..." Thanks, Mom. No sleep for me!) I also had an unreasoning fear of TVs tuned to static for a very long time, but I'm (mostly) over that now.

There is a part of me that wonders if the scares of Poltergeist still hold up. But I'm not willing to watch it again to find out.

Scariest horror movie #2: The Blair Witch Project. Yes, really. No, I never believed it was a "true story". But the movie was a very clever play on the types of ghost stories I constantly read when I was a child, and the mounting tension of weird things happening and no one knowing what was happening? Yeah, that hit all the right (wrong?) terror buttons in my hindbrain. Plus the final scenes in the movie included a bit of imagery that was, I kid you not, straight out of a recurring nightmare I have had for decades. (The bloody handprints on the walls of the house. When the camera first panned across them, I think I tried to whimper and curl into a fetal position. I don't really remember.)

We saw The Blair Witch Project right after we had moved into the house, and about a week before the Stroppy One went out of town to go to Gen-Con. So there's me, in a heightened state of freak out, by myself in a newish house, not yet used to the creaks it made. One day, when I was about to go into the mostly-finished basement to feed the cats, I called my parents and made them talk to me, in the hopes that I would be less creeped out.

But I still love horror movies. Oooh, maybe I'll watch 30 Days of Night again tonight.

Comments

[icprncs.livejournal.com]

Poltergeist really got me when I first saw it as a teen, but hasn't had as much effect in subsequent viewings. The effects don't quite hold up, and a lot of the "scary" parts rely on unexpected shock, so once you know they're coming they don't hold as much power. That said, the last time I watched it (a few months ago), I was surprised at how much of it was still effective.

Blair Witch didn't get me for the most part (I saw it after months of following the hype, near the end of its theatrical life, and was doing it for a review, so I pretty much knew what I was getting), but man, that final sequence--that's pretty unsettling.

That entry I made on Halloween last year about what movies have scared me was an interesting exercise in how my perception of "scary" has shifted with age and experience. Gore films don't really get me anymore, because I can distance myself from the visceral aspects (pun kind of intended) and recognize that it's not real, but for that reason I'm not as interested in those. Suspense or psychological horror is much more likely to have a lasting effect on me now, but perversely that makes me prefer it, because there's a greater chance I'll be immersed in it rather than standing aside and critiquing the effects work. ;)