First Day of Nightmares

I clearly and distinctly remember my first horror movie, even though the context that led to it happening has turned into somewhat nebulous and blurry. I know that I was young, and I know that I was way too young to be watching a scary movie. I know that it was at a friend's house for some sort of a party, either for Halloween or for a birthday. Beyond that, I have nothing; for all I know, the house was actually an underwater bunker and immediately before the movie we had hunted for killer dolphins with harpoon guns.

The dolphins fought back. It was a dark day.

At some point during the party, someone (probably not an adult figure, because otherwise I have to question their parenting skills) turned on the television. The screen immediately cast a sinister glow over the otherwise darkened room, filling it with malice. My eyes caught sight of a knife glinting in the moonlight, and my tiny little heart--ok, I'm dramatizing, but you get the point. Scary things were flashing, knives were stabbing, blood was blood-ing, and my tiny little soul screamed out in pure terror. I remember walking slowly away, as nonchalantly as a somewhere-between-eight-and-ten year old could manage (I was surrounded by my friends, I didn't want to seem like a wuss). I made my way up the stairs, and as soon as I was out of sight I booked it into the closet, where I buried myself in a few towels, and cried for about an hour (during which time, for some reason, no one came to find me) before I was able to come out, knees wobblin' and shakin' like I had the devil in me.

Pictured: Where those terrible chaperones must have assumed I disappeared to for an hour.

For weeks afterwards I had nightmares. They had nothing to do with that particular horror movie, of course, or even with a knife. In fact, they were entirely about Pokemon (I don't know either, it doesn't make any sense). In my nightmare, Jessie and James from Team Rocket would show up and threaten to kill me if I didn't go with them. I would sit there and wet the bed, but they refused to take no for an answer. When I tried to run, they killed me, at which point I woke up with my breath caught in my throat and a distinct inability to close my eyes ever again.

Kind of like this, but with cartoons instead of brainwashing.

But how the times have changed! I may not seek out horror movies, but I can certainly stand to watch them. I never cry for more than five minutes now, I only wet myself a teensy bit, and my screams only have the most minute hint of pain and anguish beneath the copious amounts of fear. I'm just as jumpy as most people are, and the tension of the films does make my heart beat slightly faster, but it isn't all that different from watching an action sequence in a mindless blockbuster; I'm more curious about what's going to happen next than I am dreading it.

Now, I've posted about horror movies before (damn was that a long time ago), and it strikes me now that it was the traditional horror movie that I didn't even find remotely scary, or even thrilling. The Exorcist, for all of its critical acclaim and cultural significance, barely fazed me. Before I concluded that I was desensitized to violence and scary stuff, but I don't think that's looking at the full picture.

Tonight I went to yet another movie night (we seem to have a lot of these), where we watched Hide and Seek, an old Robert De Niro and Dakota Fanning scary/thriller/horror/something movie, and let's just say I don't exactly have to worry about any nightmares tonight. About fifteen minutes in, I predicted the main plot twist from a few cliched lines of dialogue and the unfolding of the first supposed-to-be-scary scene (don't mind that noise, it's just me patting myself on the back), and though I jumped with all of my friends whenever a cat jumped out of a closet (really, Hollywood?) I never felt one moment of actual fear. The movie itself was OK. The plot was fairly bad, but all of the performances were approaching perfect and never over the top and I never felt the urge to laugh in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way. I just did not find it scary. I found it to be just the same as all of the tropes and previous plot-twisty horror flicks before it.

Contrast that to my friends, and you come up with a problem. Everyone else in the room was terrified, and rather vocally so. Repeatedly did I hear that this was a really good movie, that it was really scary, etc etc. And I just wasn't with them. Don't miss my point, though. This post is not about how nothing scares me and how I have nerves of steel.

This is, unfortunately, not me.

Paranormal Activity still freaked me out immensely, and The Blair Witch Project was approaching unwatchable for me. Meanwhile, multiple of my friends have told me that Paranormal Activity was terrible, including one of the friends at tonight's movie night who was immensely freaked by the jump scares of Hide and Seek. So what gives? Why do the wrong things scare me? How is it that the state of complete nothingness that fills up the screen of Activity and Blair Witch make me want to gouge my eyes out while the things that legitimately everyone else has proven that they are afraid of (I'm assuming people must be scared of these things, otherwise someone would have to stop making them) don't even make me blink.

Rewind back to February 12th. I know the day because it was the mid-season premiere of The Walking Dead, and AMC was running an all-day horror extravaganza. Me and a few friends of mine were sitting in the main lounge on the 6th floor of our dorm, and someone or other switched to the channel in passing. Lo-and-behold, the terrifying scene from my childhood popped up on the screen. I was horrified for all of five seconds before I realized that what I was watching was ridiculous. The movie in question? Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. Seriously. Tiny me didn't even have the decency to have his life temporarily ruined by a decent film. We watched it for a bit, but really it just depressed me so I left the room to think for a bit. That movie had literally changed my life. For a good seven years afterwards I didn't watch another scary movie. Hell, I couldn't even play the video version of Clue because it's mildly suspenseful murder plot haunted me as a kid. But now I sit down and watch it, and that is what comes on screen?

Seriously, this happens. Whose idea was this?

I've been having trouble putting all of this into perspective, because I kind of like the idea that I'm in some small little way better than other people. I can survive watching a horror movie without freaking out, which obviously puts me into an upper echelon of people (in my opinion, us higher beings should be the only ones allowed to breed). It might be a tiny victory, but I don't typically get very many of those. But at the same time I know I'm oversimplifying. Me being able to see through Hide and Seek has nothing to do with my steely nerves, or my superior intellect (just because horror movies have nothing to do with my intellect doesn't mean it doesn't exist). It has to do with what I'm actually afraid of.

I won't pretend to know what that is. It would be great if I could wrap this all up with a slick line about how my "fear of the unknown" has crossed over into my interpretation of pop culture (and feel free to read this as me saying that, 'cause that actually makes me seem kind of deep in a moody poet sort of way), but I doubt that's actually the case. Go out on the street and ask someone what the scariest movie they have ever seen is, and you'll get a ton of different answers. The Exorcist, Paranormal Activity, The Blair Witch Project, Rosemary's Baby, Jennifer's Body, Ghostbusters, Alien, Dumbo, the list goes on. I'll be you'd even get a few Hide and Seek answers, too, judging from my friends' reactions.

Racism scares me, okay?

My point is--well, I guess I have two points, really. First is that people are different. We all have different tastes, different fears, all that jazz. But more importantly (because no one really cares about people in general), I am different. I'm not that little kid anymore that cries when Michael Myers stabs into the laundry chute. I've grown past that into something...else. Someone who, when he watches a movie like that, he notices the god-awful plot and the above-par acting. Maybe that's not really better. Maybe my point still stands from my last post on horror movies, and I'm desensitized to some moderately important things. But at least it's a change. At least I'm growing.

Screw it, that's a terrible ending theme. Obviously my fear of the unknown has crossed over into my interpretation of pop culture, negatively impacting my viewing of all films in the horror genre. There.

I'm gonna go have a nightmare now.