Scare Me

Months ago (but really, doesn't it seem like months and months ago at this point?) when I was shown Attack On Titan I was moderately disturbed by the intense violence and deep emotional trauma. Rory (my anime coach) was slightly taken aback by my response and noted that he had seen so much crazy anime (and just straight up crazy shit) that the sight of a Titan slowly chewing a screaming woman holding a baby just didn't rustle his jimmies.





I mention this to show that I am still a neophyte when it comes to a lot of cultural development. I take the long way round on everything, the ten year college plan is for overachievers where I come from baby. And so it is like this in my relationship with horror movies.

I've always dug on weird flicks, had a good time watching a horror movie with friends or seeing some crazy foreign film that just flips your lid and you stumble around not knowing what to do with yourself. But I've never really rushed out to get scared. When I have watched horror films alone in the past, I've always done it during the day, because it would be way too scary at night. And for a long time I thought that was a bad thing.

The fact that I watched films like The Descent at 2pm on a Tuesday and was still curled in a ball terrified should tell you all you need to know about both how awesome that film and is and how easily I get scared by things.

Then through watching some late night horror flicks in good company, I started to realize that it was a lot more fun to create an atmosphere to engage with horror films in. I'd jump in my seat and then feel the adrenaline kick and then giggle to myself (and then go to Denny's, but that's besides the point). I began to really feel that high, the fear high (which sounds like a band that would've been a part of Ozzfest in the early part of the new century)(when people actually still bought CDs and video stores existed), the adrenaline high that maniacs chase when they go jumping off of buildings and climbing cliffs (presumably, I don't know anyone that does these things but they're all over youtube).

Now I can't get enough. I'm desperate for actually scary films. Several nights a week are now dedicated to turning off all the lights in my apartment and sitting in rapt attention (checking your phone breaks the spell you know) to something that will hopefully scare the hell out of me.

Twice now I've made mistakes thinking that films by the same creative team were going to be horror films when in actuality they were just totally crazy foreign art house movies that were jarring, shocking, funny, weird, disturbing, brilliant, beautiful and intense but not actually all that scary; Amer  and The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears. Another time I made the mistake of watching You're Next which was actually a mumblecore movie in secret disguise and it reeked of a cloying desperation for credibility, as well as stank with shit writing. What's more distressing than the occasional foreign freak out or mumblegore wank fest is watching an actual scary movie that isn't bad and not getting that scared. Realizing that I'm growing accustomed to horror already, even though I'm doing my damndest to create a spooky mood for myself, once you've seen enough horror you begin to see the strings and you start to not get as flipped out as you might've been had you not been ready for the boo, anticipating the scare, feeling it coming, building it up and then being let down.

The Last Exorcism I really wanted to scare me more than it did, granted it's not a great movie but watching it I could tell that it would have really freaked me out had I not been inoculated through films like Noroi or (more recently) Lake Mungo. Is it that I've been spoiled or am I growing a tolerance? Have I started off with too many great films in a row that I've been forming a statistical anomaly wherein I'm blind to the massive amounts of shit pumping by and when I do take notice I get all huffy and weird about it? Gotta question, like, everything these days.

Just finished watching (the original) Shutter and it gave me some good jumps and some good scares but I'm starting to get worried that horror flicks are losing their magic to scare me. My english degree attests to my real and weird interest in taking apart fictional constructs until they lose all possibility for enjoyment and are reduced to intellectual grandstanding and pop culture fascism.

I want more scary movies. I want you to help me find them. Tell me your really actually scary movies please. I need to chase this high before it becomes a problem and I have to never do it again, like cigarettes and facebook.