You Can’t Scare Me
Scary stories for scary kids.
Earlier this year (when this blog was originally published) I went to see Coraline, an excellent stop-motion adaptation of a Neil Gaiman book. I was blown away by the amazing job director Henry Selick did visualizing the novel’s darker scenes. The film, while not exactly horror, was definitely creepy for a children’s movie. As I looked around the packed theater at the children seated in the audience, I saw a few covering their eyes but for the most part, a gleeful look filled their faces — they were digging the creepiness as much as I was.
When I was a kid, I was raised on a steady diet of horror movies. Thanks in large part to Amy, my oldest sister, and her video rental card, Mary, my other sister, and I watched an above-average amount of scary movies growing up. When Amy moved away to college, Mary and I did not stop our horror flick fixation. Instead of perusing the animation aisle at Blockbuster to pick up the latest Disney cartoon, she and I shopped around for a new horror movie every time our mother took us to the video store.
On Friday nights, I would stay up late and watch Joe Bob Briggs’ Monster Vision on TNT. Biggs would host a series of schlocky horror movies, offering witticisms and factoids during commercial breaks.
Thanks to Professor Briggs, I was introduced to some of the worst horror movies ever made — and I loved them. From Project: MetalBeast, an early ‘90s film that featured a werewolf with bulletproof skin, to The Gate, a movie in which a heavy metal record played backwards opens a portal to Hell, I watched every scary movie I could get my hands on.
One of my all-time favorite movies as a kid was Monster Squad, an homage to the Little Rascals that featured a group of kids who fought the Universal Monsters. During my favorite scene, in which a decidedly non-bullet proof werewolf was blown up with a grenade and began to piece himself back together (the grenade was, after all, not made of silver), I would hide behind the couch. I would jump up and down with excitement — afraid to watch but unwilling to look away for longer then 10 seconds. When the film was finally released on DVD last year, I spent a morning tracking down a copy so I could relive fond childhood memories. I’m happy to say that Monster Squad is one movie that still holds up.
During high school, horror experienced somewhat of a renaissance thanks to the film Scream. Because of the movie’s blockbuster performance, horror movies (specifically slasher ones) were all the rage – and I watched nearly all of them. As I consumed one blood-soaked 90-minute body count after another, I started to realize something — I was growing bored. Horror movies, in general, weren’t scaring me anymore. Scream had given me nightmares. So had The Blair Witch Project but that had more to do with my own imagination then the actual film. Following a long dry spell where I watched horror movie after horror movie without so much as a bad dream, I watched The Ring which managed to elicit a restless night. Since then, I cannot think of a single movie I’ve seen that has scared me.
I’m not talking about making me jump. Pop a balloon in my face and I’ll jump. I like my horror movies to still leave me scared well out of the theater and, sadly, I’ve become desensitized to scary stuff.
I don’t watch as many horror movies as I used to. Since I don’t watch them to be scared, I tend to stick to ones that either have good effects or a good story — ingredients hard to find in this particular genre. While I didn’t have nightmares about button eyes thanks to Coraline, I at least fell asleep content in the fact I watched a good movie.
