My Dilemma

My entire life when I heard the word "horror" I lumped a giant number of movies together. Everything from Jurassic Park to Friday the 13th and maybe even E.T. in my younger days. To me a horror film was anything that seemed scary and made me jump or uncomfortable. Of course for some people 101 Dalmatians could be scary if you happen to be very hyper-sensitive. Learning that horror is actually a very specific genre of film has really made me kind of rethink how I look at movies entirely. I am now thinking and pondering about whether a monster is "possible" or if some tree in the background might be a bit more menacing than I would have previously imagined. It also has made me think a bit about what exactly a monster is for me and why the things that scare me elicit that emotion from me.

My childhood fears mostly included storms and the creepy crawlies under rocks in the creek behind my home. For me horror doesn't as much come from things that I personally find scary but for me I think it's more of an evolutionary thing. We, just like many other animals, are hard wired to be scared of certain things from birth because of hundreds of thousands of years of our brain developing. For the most part we are scared of the dark, scared of animals like snakes, and if we encountered an animal larger than us that posed a threat I would imagine the majority of us would be at least a bit fearful. It seems that the response that we once used to possibly save our lives in a more "natural" lifestyle and setting we now use to create some excitement in our comparatively dull lives. I'd imagine our ancestors got enough excitement out of a day by taking down a Wooly Mammoth or fighting off a Saber Toothed Tiger without any real desire for any extra "spark" in their lives.

So why do we seem to enjoy being terrified? Why do we even go so far as to pay a ridiculous amount of money just to sit in a seat and wait to be frightened? Wouldn't most people say that we would naturally avoid a situation that will aversely effect our mood? It seems to me that our lives, for the most part, are mundane. Going to a movie and being able to live in someone else’s shoes for ninety minutes may be a escape for some of us from our own lives. Though I doubt many people wish to have a Cat Woman stalking them or a minion of the Devil creeping on them I do think that we all live in some envy of the crazy and action filled lives of those we see on the screen. The horror movies are especially exciting for people I think because instead of just guns-blazing action or in your face blood and guts thrillers that horror movies offer a sense of suspense and nervousness. I think a combination of those two things is something we can identify with and though the actual meat of the stories does not reflect our own lives we are still able to somewhat identify with the basic fears of the characters in the stories.

I think that movies in general are a great way for people to let their imaginations run wild. My favorite part of learning about the real genre of horror is that the basic principles and some of the biggest names in the area say, “less is more” essentially. The idea that you can build a mood during the course of a movie and bring the level of tension in a room without even showing a monster really is amazing to me. Rather than just having some grotesque monstrosity rambling around a set attacking its helpless victims the horror genre is really wanting to make you wish that is what was happening because of the terror it inspires. The best stories in my opinion are the ones that let you imagine your own side of the events and the actual story merely points you in the right direction. This allows the ending to be surprising but also to feel more personal and more real to the viewer or reader.

The lessons on the genre have really inspired me to want to go back and re-look at the films I previously considered horror but may reconsider to a point now. It also has started to let me look at the films more seriously and try to pick up the subtle things the director has done, good and bad, to try to create the desired fear and disgust created by the monster that is in a proper horror film.