Written by Izel Villarba, find more of his work here.
It’s that time of the year again. Though things are a little different — actually A LOT different — the sentiment remains the same: we’re getting spooky for Halloween. In regards to this special holiday, many people bring up the idea of “spookiness” with a fun, childish quality to it. Let’s wear more black! Consume more pumpkin products! Get more into the Cure! Just for like a month. First of all, you should always be into the Cure. Second of all, don’t forget that “spooky” literally means “evoking fear”. Yes, fear! Halloween is the season of horror my friends.
Now if you’re really about the spooky life, there’s something I want to talk about that goes hand in hand with Halloween: horror movies. You can’t have Halloween without a proper horror movie.
I hate to be that person that’s really into horror movies, yet here I am — a monster of my own creation. Every year I make it a personal challenge to watch a horror flick for every day in October. Going on my third year now and let me tell ya, it’s doing wonders for my emotional instability. People give me a funny look when I tell them about this. Why put myself through such psychological trauma for 31 days straight? Why not, I’m hooked. It also really does put me in a better mood for Halloween. Especially during such a tumultuous year of collective death, depression, anger, financial uncertainty, and other real life terrors; throwing myself through a frightful wringer feels like a much needed escape. It makes this upcoming Halloween seem somewhat normal in comparison to everything else that’s been happening.
Maybe you’ve been too sketched out to give horror movies a chance? Hopefully this shows you they’re not as terrifying as they’re made out to be.
GENRE
I feel like I grew into horror movies. When I was a kid and shortly after watching Child’s Play for the first time, I’d sleep facing away from my closet because I believed Chucky could pop out at any moment. In high school, I watched The Exorcist on Halloween with a group of friends when an inexplicable *thud* came from the window and scared the shit out of us. To this day the thud remains unexplained. I remember watching Paranormal Activity in theaters, believing it was real, and afterwards feeling too scared to walk in my own house; even with the lights on. I’ve heard similar things about The Blair Witch Project and walking in the woods or Jaws and swimming at the beach. Now older, and after studying film in school, I’ve learned to understand and appreciate the artistic choices that go into making a scary movie.
The imagination is a wonderful, terrifying thing. People are literally scared of anything and everything, so horror movies have an endless supply of sources to work off of — often having us face our most subconscious fears. The best ones make us realize that the source of our fears comes from within and what we’re really scared of is ourselves. Horror films are their own genre while also having the unique ability to crossover into every other one. Jurassic Park? Horror movie. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? Mutha fuckin horror movie! There’s no other genre that covers this much ground. Horror runs the gamut. It doesn’t have to pertain to Halloween either, there’s a horror movie for practically every holiday. I highly recommend ThanksKilling, Krampus, Leprechaun, or My Bloody Valentine to name a few. The best thing about scary movies is that they can come out whenever they want; you could curate your very own year of despair (pending sub title for 2020). Midsommar literally came out in mid-Summer! Though, that’s less of a horror movie and more of a break up movie, which possibly makes it even scarier.
If you’ve seen enough of them, you’ll learn to hopefully get over the fright of actually watching horror films and realize they’re just that — films. Someone made a conscious effort to make it for your viewing pleasure. It can’t hurt you unless you let it! On top of that, maybe you’ll realize the creative liberties they took to make you think that those deaths and wounds were real; a lot of work went into the viscosity of that blood. Every spooky scene in a horror flick has at least 10 other people behind the camera looking at the exact same thing as you are, the only difference is you’re not trying to raise their heart rates. Think of all the lights set up outside the frame or the production assistants running around taking coffee orders, just to make the movie especially terrifying. The filmmakers are the ones really out to get you.
PSYCHOLOGY
Why do people like listening to broody and oppressive music? What makes the Cramps or the Misfits or Bauhaus so ghastly and yet so pleasant to listen to? I guess the answers to those questions are applicable to broody and oppressive movies too. They’re enjoyable because they elicit a specific feeling, which differs depending on who you’re listening to or what you’re watching, but it’s most certainly a feeling you can lose yourself in, in the best way possible. Similar to roller coasters, horror movies are inherently thrill rides. They take you out of this world, bringing you on the verge of death before reminding you that you’re still alive. Maybe you’ll never want to go through the experience again but hey, at least you got through it. There’s that skip of a heartbeat and increase in blood pressure found in scary movies that share the same capacity as falling in love. Roller coasters, love, and horror, all things that bring a little more exhilaration to our lives.
For my high school’s film club, we went on a trip to the horror movie exhibition at Seattle’s Experience Music Project (now called the Museum of Pop Culture). I believe that’s where my love for the genre really got a hold of me. The show was filled with props, memorabilia, art, and several videos and interviews with famous horror filmmakers and actors that explained why scary movies are made and why people love to watch them. They had Hannibal Lector’s mask, Freddy’s claws, the Alien costume, Frankenstein’s boots, endless classic horror paraphernalia that I’d kill to see again now that I’ve grown up and learned to appreciate them.
Photos via Can’t Look Away Curator’s website
One video still really sticks with me: an interview with Cabin Fever/ Hostel director, Eli Roth. He mentions that when people are really freaked out while watching a horror film they tend to cover their eyes. This is a huge mistake. What they should really be covering is their ears (your eyes also close by themselves, dumb ass). Horror takes advantage of our sense of sound like no other genre. When we’re watching the main character explore a dark, empty house/ cave/ spaceship, neither the character nor the audience can see a thing — our ability to pick up sound amplifies. Within those sounds, or often lack thereof, our imagination runs rampant. The best horror films take advantage of this sonic tension so that our minds jump to our most primal feelings of fear. It’s in that brief space of expecting something to break the tension that we lose our shit. Typically in horror, this is the build up to the jump scare; those moments that have us on the edge of our seat. Especially as kids, we project our most irrational insecurities onto this blind unknown: a school bully, a parent’s divorce, a breakup, etc. all in one generalized scare, hoping it manifests itself into something both manageable and defeat-able. Not knowing what we’re scared of is the most terrifying feeling of all.
The greatest horror movies scare you long after you’ve finished watching them.
One of the best films I saw this month, The House of the Devil. Within the context of the movie, this scene is fucking INTENSE.
On another note, I firmly believe that watching Scooby-Doo conditioned many of us to get into horror. Just think about it. I’ll speak no more on the subject.
“For more than a century, horror films have thrilled and frightened audiences, providing heart-pounding terror and sleepless nights. But horror films offer more than just entertainment. They express the primal emotions of the human experience by tapping into the anxieties of contemporary culture and visualizing the unspeakable fears and forbidden desires that lie just beneath the polite face of society.”
-Synopsis for the Can’t Look Away: the Lure of Horror Film Exhibition at Seattle’s EMP
SUB-GENRE
It wouldn’t be a horror movie without its stupid characters. Part of the enjoyment of watching certain scary movies is knowing that you’d never make the same mistakes the protagonists make. You’re a lot smarter and far more clever and could totally make it out alive. But it’s fun to see other people get it wrong. You’re so much better than these people that you actually get some enjoyment out of seeing them die on screen. Horror can turn the proverbial mirror onto ourselves, make us sympathize with a serial killer or monster, visualize our taboo desires for us to experience vicariously, live DELICIOUSLY.
Popcorn scary movies, usually slasher flicks, can be quite formulaic and often problematic in this regard. They carry character tropes that make the film predictable if done poorly. Gotta have the dumb jock. Gotta have the nerd that warns everyone but no one listens to, or the person of color A) for diversity and B) for them to die early. Gotta have a sex scene. After all, sex is one of few occasions in life where we’re at our most vulnerable; in the case of horror movies, most vulnerable for murder. Most importantly, these kinds of horror movies have to have the “final girl”, a heroine that survives it all. She starts off innocent in the film and by the end learns to thwart the antagonist, symbolically losing her virginity (dumb film nerd analysis, sorry).
Fortunately we live in a post-modern, self-referential, meta-woke society in which there are horror movies that deconstruct horror movies. I’d say it all started off with Scream in the 1990’s, then Cabin in the Woods and Tucker and Dale vs. Evil in recent years adding to the list. They’re all quite good. One of the weirder watches I had this month was Teeth, a coming of age movie about a virgin who, after many disturbing and uncomfortable sexual advances from awful men, learns to live with the fact that her vagina has teeth. Really gives agency to the “final girl” trope in the most terrifying way possible.
Scary Movie, a spoof parody film of Scream, a horror parody film that’s also a horror film.
Not all spooky films follow the generic formula though. Recently, there’s been a huge resurgence of the psychological thriller. These are always really creative in premise and atmospherically tense. I think they share a lot of the same qualities that made the horror classics of the 1970’s and 80’s like Silence of the Lambs, The Shining, The Exorcist, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre so culturally impactful and age well. The Witch and Hereditary of course come to mind, but I’ll add The House of the Devil, Mandy, Raw, Creep, and Summer of 84’ as ones you might not have given a shot yet.
I carry a special place in my heart for the “shitty production value” horror movie, particularly the ones that emphasize a lot of practical effects. Some are still really good in execution like The Thing, Evil Dead, or The Fly, while others dive deep into the absurd, which can be entertaining in its own right. Filmmakers who’re like “fuck it, we don’t have a whole lot of money so let’s go with this crazy idea to draw crowds and cash”, then go and make Killer Klowns from Outer Space.
Horror contains multitudes.
ILLOGICAL CONCLUSIONS
This may as well have been a film school essay called “It Lives: In Defense of the Horror Movie” and I could patronize you more for not liking the genre as much as I do, but I’ll save you that level of cringe. I might’ve already deterred you from reading this since the start, but if you’re still with me I’d like to leave you with an anecdote.
On day one of this month I had every intention of watching Crawl, an apparently really good horror movie I had heard so much about. 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, a reputable source! I had a couple friends interested in joining me at the start of my horror month. I roll up to their apartment and give them the pitch: “alright so this movie’s about killer alligators, kinda corny, but it’s supposed to be really good because it has really good reviews”. My friends couldn’t get past the alligator premise, they convinced themselves by looking at the 60% Metacritic score. Alas, another reputable source. “I dunno man, 60% is not THAT good. If we’re going to watch a horror movie we need to know what we’re getting into”. I knew I was still going to watch Crawl another day so we ended up watching The Autopsy of Jane Doe instead. Okay horror movie, not great. Decent ideas, predictable characters, falls flat in the second act after a really solid set up. Well, I watched Crawl the next day and guess what? It was way fucking better!
This is why you shouldn’t have expectations. This film is fantastic.
Knowing what you’re getting into ruins the fun of a scary movie experience. So if you’re stuck on watching a specific horror film, or horror films in general, or literally anything, my advice is to not have any expectations. A global pandemic broke out and fucked up all of our expectations, so for starters don’t even have expectations to begin with. We are literally living in a horror movie! Just watch it and come up with your own conclusions on if it was a waste of time or not. The worst thing that could happen is an hour and a half of your life is gone. At most, two hours. What the fuck else would you have spent that time on? You have all the time in the world to make up for it.
So watch horror and live a little.
Here’s this month’s list. Some days I didn’t have time to watch a movie so I had to double, sometimes triple up on other days. Of course my dumbass was too scared to watch the more frightening ones in the beginning, so they were all saved for the end. Lucky me.
1 – The Autopsy of Jane Doe
2 – Crawl
3 – Black Christmas
4 – Pet Semetary (Remake)
5 – Eyes Without a Face
6 – My Bloody Valentine
7 – Amityville Horror
8 – Amityville Horror (Remake)
9 – The Devil’s Rejects
10 – Repulsion
11 – Teeth
12 – Tales from the Hood
13 – Scanners
14 – Army of Darkness
15 – Jacob’s Ladder
16 – The Lodge
17 – House of Wax
18 – 30 Days of Night
19 – Tetsuo: The Iron Man
20 – The House of the Devil
21 – The Haunting in Connecticut
22 – Let Me In
23 – Thirteen Ghosts
24 – From Dusk till Dawn
25 – The Visit
26 – The Endless
27 – Possession
28 – Jennifer’s Body
29 – The Killing of a Sacred Deer
30 – Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
31 – Audition
