Why We Watch Horror

Ask your average movie watcher on the street what their favorite film genre is, and they'll most likely ask you for spare change. Hobos do not attend many feature films. But ask your friends, your family, that weird guy with the sniffling nose that lives in your closet... and the answer will be: Comedy. Drama. Romance. Action. If you're a fanboy, then... Fantasy. Sci-Fi. Yet rarely will you ever meet a person who will state "horror" as their primary genre of choice. In fact, if someone asks you that question and you answer "horror", then be prepared for some odd looks and discreet inquiries behind your back.

Horror is a genre that defies the conventional rules of movie-watching.

Zombies vs. Lawn Mowers

Line up all movie types and you'll get one of two categories. You'll have movies based on and around real life situations; these are your comedies, your dramas, your romances, and even your thrillers, your mysteries and your girls-talking-about-boys and boys-talking-about-girls. Then you'll have the second column, the big "OTHERS", any movie that transports us from our everyday world to a fantastic new vista. This is blatant escapism, and horror movies fall into this category.

Thus the conclusion: we go to horror movies to escape into a terrifying world. What is that all about? I mean, if most people are nervous about stating that they like horror, why are there so many horror titles on shelves in video stores? I've come to the observant conclusion that 90% of cheaply made straight-to-video film releases that aren't about sex are horror titles. Most indie film productions I've seen gravitate toward horror. So perhaps we can blame this on the sick and twisted lives of filmmakers and a special makeup effects artist named Steve who drive the industry into making countless sequels to Troll and The Dentist. Perhaps.

Ah, that's a lie. And I don't really care to beat around the bush any more. We LIKE horror. I do. You do. Even if you say you don't, you do. We're not perverted, insane individuals who spend our evenings polishing axes and labels jars with body parts in them. At least, I hope not. We're the normal, weird people in the world, like everyone else, and once in a while we like to choose a bit of fright in our lives over a movie featuring some girl dying of cancer. That's the way the world works.

The strange thing is, from what I've observed, most people are dumbfounded as to why they have an occasional hankering for a bit of blood and scares. I've also heard numerous explanations, ranging from the fact that we want to be confronted with terror that makes our ordinary problems piddling, to the fact that we get boosts of adrenaline -- similar to rollercoaster rides -- when we're scared. That's all well and good, but I just want to sit down and talk about me. A fairly normal guy who may watch a lot of movies, but is still somewhat confounded toward the horror genre.

Imagination vs. Figmintation

See, I'm the overly imaginative type. My first experience with horror movies go way back to my childhood, when a babysitter exposed me to the opening scene of Jaws, and thus terrified me from going into the ocean for the rest of my life. I remember seeing bits of "forbidden" movie snippets as a kid, such as the creepy scene in Dark Crystal when the one muppet loses its soul by looking into the crystal. It was a thrill to watch something so condemned by parents everywhere. I truly believe that if adults had openly embraced Freddy and Jason, we would have never seen past part one.

We were watching through fingers in front of our eyes. It was scary and forbidden and thrilling, and the nightmares would stick with us for weeks. And I think on some level we recognized a need to be scared like this. It was playing a bit with fire, testing our strength of will and courage against the freakiest and scariest that cinema had to offer. That still continues today.

Bring it on! There's the rally cry of most horror moviegoers. Whether we are curled up in our seats, terrified, or alive with eyes dancing to the visions of action and chainsaws, this is the mantra that carries us through many a haunted house. We are strong, we are going to make it to the end credits. Forget the fact that there was a two month period in my life where I was certain that the black monster from Aliens lurked in every shadow, I made it to the end of that film!

Scar-dude vs. Hockey-dude

Within the genre of horror there are numerous subgenres. For the sake of simplicity, I separate all horror into two (more) categories. There are the horror movies that aren't scary, and the ones that scar me for life.

For me, horror movies that aren't scary include slashers, horror comedies, and ones that fall in love with their own SFX budgets. Slashers are the most beloved in the horror community. Get a bunch of virgin teenagers in an inescapable situation, add some psycho with a knife/chainsaw/axe/claw, and let simmer. These are the movies that we go to for the villain, to see this indestructable bad guy plow a path of horror and destruction. Slashers rely on fake scares and jumps (where something sudden happens and the crowd jumps uncontrollably) to boost the adrenaline factor, and adds a lot of gorey death scenes for shock effect. Sure, we're not particularly frightened when a character gets chopped up, but the blood and guts convinces us that it's *wrong* to be watching this. Wrong in the sense of rubbernecking a traffic accident. Wrong, yet we still watch.

Let's take a minute to discuss the 90s version of the slasher film, which kicked off with Scream. Now, Scream was a great film that single-handedly revived the teen slasher, but its genius was misunderstood by all that followed, even its own sequels. The key to Scream's likability wasn't so much the pop culture references or the witty good guys. It was obeying the rule of slasher movies that you must have a bad guy who can strike genuine fear into our hearts. That guy from Scream was sadistic, vengeful and brutal; you can wrap that up in horror cliches, and it still generated a bit of "I would never want to meet this guy in a brightly lit room, never mind a dark alley" feel. Yet it was still a bad guy with a background, with a method to his madness. When a slasher film grants superhuman powers to its bad guy and makes the murders as casual as baking cookies, that's when the slashers lose their appeal.

While not too scary, horror comedies hold a dear place in my heart. Humor and horror go hand-in-hand, since we as a human race have a tendency to mock the darkest parts of life. Buffy the Vampire Slayer became one of the first TV shows to use this back and forth go-between of horror and humor that had been so successful in horror comedy films. Jaws interplayed our fear of sharks with some genuinely funny interchanges between its lead characters, so much so that at times you forget you're even watching a horror film... that is, until, the teeth jump out of the water.

An American Werewolf in London went the black humor route to the werewolf legend. Played straight, this might have been a somewhat scary but ultimately forgettable horror film. Yet by adding a talking ghoul as a best friend and some cheeky comedy bits, the filmmakers hit on the fact that we need a laugh or two to restore our sanity. Laughter bolsters our courage, just in time to make us forget that we're going to be frightened very shortly. Dude, I *needed* those laughs after having that dream sequence where that guy transforms into a freaky vampire and screams at the screen. Evil Dead 2 takes this concept much further, giving us not only an evil force with a sense of humor, but an undefeatable good guy (the antithesis of the slasher) with major firepower. Horror comedies defy even the rules of the strange horror films, which adds to the appeal.

There is a middle ground of the horror genre, which are sometimes labeled as "suspense" or "thriller". A suspense film is basically a horror movie that takes its sweet-ass time delivering its scares. Sometimes, it never does. The whole point is to keep us on the edge of our couches, writhing in anticipation for the bad stuff that is to come. It's a feeling of dread that is so primal to us that all we want to do is run away. Suspense to me isn't true horror; they're films that tip-toe up to the line of horror, then shriek like a little girl and run away looking for a calming episode of Friends.

S.I. Joe vs. Poochie

Of course, you'll have a lot of horror flicks that simply defy categorization, and this hodge-podge area is generally where I'll find my the movies that really and truly scare me. The Exorcist isn't much more than a two-person play in an enclosed location, but it managed to catch on screen a sense of genuine evil that could make even the most Halloween-loving of us shrink away in fear of wanting to see what's behind the gates of Hell. The House On Haunted Hill isn't great filmmaking by any means, but the makers of it knew that they had to go beyond simple gore to get the real frights. We're used to seeing cheap blood squibs and fake wounds on screen. But take a "ghost", chop out some of the frames to make them move jerkily, then speed up the process... and you have something really creepy. In The Mouth Of Madness plays out like a bad dream that we've all had at some time or another, waking up in the antithesis of all horror towns, where evil is getting together like it's the National 25th Convention of Nogoodniks. Even The Blair Witch Project, for all of its backlash and opposition out there, had a single-minded goal: to think about what really scares us, and then recreate it as closely as possible in a movie format.

To tell you the truth, I don't see much horror, compared to most genres, but it lures me back every now and then. It's the one genre where there really can be no set rules (unless the filmmakers are stupid enough to follow clichés), where anything can happen, and where an ongoing dare between the screen and me takes place.

I bet I can scare you.

Oh yeah? Bring it on.