An Editorial by Paul Farrell
Dedicated to Tom Holland:
a man who provided this self-proclaimed horror nut
with his very first experience in terror.
Full disclosure, before we begin: I love horror movies.
Whenever someone discovers my love for horror, they typically want to know the same thing: what do I think is scary. The question is more often than not posed with great emphasis, as though a challenge to the credibility of my claim. That is, if I’m such a big fan of horror movies, then I should unequivocally know what is and is not scary.
This idea touches upon the fundamental difference between someone who is a “fan” of horror and someone who is not (or perhaps only peripherally so):
The fan understands that the nuances of what frightens a person are in constant flux and are, in large part, contextual to that individual’s life; ultimately that the overall quality of a horror film’s success or failure cannot solely be determined by whether or not it is overtly “scary”.
The other simply thinks of horror as either being good or bad as tied to its ability to make them jump, squirm, shield their eyes or scream.
But… why is that?
Horror is the one genre that almost always leaves a scar.
Most everyone that watches movies, even if only casually, can remember their very first horror film. Not the first that they decided to go and pay for to see in a theater, but their very first one - that movie they caught late one night at home on cable TV. Maybe the one that their friend snuck over on VHS. Maybe the one they only caught pieces of, the imagery of which never left them.
The one they weren’t supposed to watch.
They remember where they were. They remember who they were with that night. They remember the light of the TV flickering against the wallpaper. Why?
Because they were scared. They were in danger. They were utterly fucking terrified.
Few things in life leave a mark on your memory, a tangible impression that goes on to inform you as a person, as a consumer of cinema and art in general. And its the reaction to that experience (or perhaps even lack there of) that leads to the aforementioned split in the cinematic ideology of horror.
Let me tell you a story:
I was young, in first or second grade. I was staying the night at my cousin’s house. It was late.
My brother and two cousins had already gone to sleep, but, being the oldest, I wasn’t tired. My Uncle let me stay up with him and we watched MAJOR LEAGUE. In short, he’s a pretty great Uncle.
At some point, I dozed off.
I woke up some time later alone on the couch. The single lamp in the room had been turned off and the light from the TV cast an eerie glow on the somewhat unfamiliar trappings of the living room. This wasn’t my house, after all, and late at night, in my dream-like state, it seemed particularly foreign.
Clips from a news broadcast were playing on the TV. I saw an anchor woman saying something as an image of police cars and flashing lights floated beside her. I immediately got the impression that the topic being discussed was a tragic one.
I was in and out of consciousness then, slipping back into darkness and reemerging in bursts of time, the lengths of which were impossible to discern. That’s when, suddenly, I became inexplicably alert.
There was a woman on the television now. She was alone in a living room, not unlike the one I found myself in then. She looked frightened. All I could think about was the news anchor, the images of the police cars. In my young, sleepy brain, what I was seeing was attached to that broadcast, was an extension of the news.
I felt the hair on my arms stand on end. She was looking for something. I prayed she wouldn’t find whatever it was despite not having the slightest clue what it could even be. She bent down and peered under the couch. That’s when she found it.
A doll. A doll with red hair and a devilish smile. It looked like the MY BUDDY doll I had at home. My heart sank in my chest. Something about the scene told me that the doll was off - wrong, somehow. She picked it up and it talked to her, as some dolls with pull strings are prone to do. That’s when she flipped the thing over.
Carefully, she unfastened the back of his overalls and removed the battery plate. As she did so, I felt my chest tighten further, felt the breath escaping me in faster spurts. I knew what she was going to find behind that battery plate. I didn’t want to keep watching, but I couldn’t stop myself and then…
No batteries.
I screamed. I screamed and I ran. I had no idea what the doll did next. No idea what happened to the woman. No idea why or how that particular news outlet could have nabbed such a well photographed and choreographed version of the events they were reporting on. I didn’t care. That doll was alive. It was real.
I didn’t sleep that night (and neither did my Uncle). I had nightmares the moment I closed my eyes. I was convinced that the danger was there, right then, in the room with me. I was too young, perhaps too naive to understand that what I was really feeling was the acceptance of the reality of danger in general. Not necessarily in the room, but in the world.
Within the next few days I was told that what I had seen was a piece of Tom Holland’s film CHILD’S PLAY and it was over a decade before I could bring myself to finally watch the film in full. I avoided horror for the remainder of my childhood, turned away from it entirely. Over time, I grew to think less of it, but, admittedly, it was because I didn’t understand.
After all, you cannot gain an understanding or appreciation of any art form through avoidance. But, when I did find my way back, many years later and was finally able to look the genre square in the eye, it occurred to me that my dismissal implied… reverence.
As I sat at a friend’s house, late one night, a teenager with a greater sense of agency, I felt the same hairs rise on neck. The same sinking feeling in my stomach. Only this time as Karen Barclay turned over Chucky, I didn’t scream and I didn’t run. I smiled.
CHILD’S PLAY hadn’t changed. It was the exact same movie it had been a decade before. It would always be the same. But, its affect on me would forever be in flux, rooted in the experience it implanted in my mind when I was young enough to not know the difference between imagination and reality. That was a special feeling, one I could sense the echoes of as I revisited the film all of those years later. And those echoes, although faint and not nearly as biting, allowed me to remember the sort of danger and risk that the unknown represented to the my 7 year old self; the rush of adrenaline that becomes more difficult to recapture with each passing year.
Some children’s lives are understandably constructed of a series of blockades, various defense mechanisms put in place by both society and their own families to maintain a sense of safety. And, in many of those cases, it is cinema that first takes a battering ram to those defenses.
For some, our experiences with horror then become a sort of fuel, a drive to recreate that moment, the intensity of the feeling. For others, well, it becomes a conceptualization and blanket assessment of what the best of that particular kind of art has to offer: fear. And, perhaps for them, becomes something they altogether turn away from. Disregard. View as lesser because, deep down, they simply don’t like how it makes them feel, finding it easier to avoid understanding rather than facing the discomforting truth.
I used to get annoyed when people would ask me what I thought was scary. My annoyance was born not out of the query but the general response to my answers. Often, what I find scary is anything but to the non-horror fan.
However, the more I think about it, the more I’ve come to realize that when you forget about all other cinematic criteria, stripping a film down to its most carnal and visceral elements, what you’re left with is a doll under the couch, talking to a woman with no batteries to make that action possible. Without realizing it, that non-horror fan is asking you, purely and simply:
“How can I experience a moment of utter, visceral terror?”
We’re all chasing the same high, whether a die hard horror nut or the most casual of romantic comedy viewer when it comes to horror. There’s something important buried within the question of what’s “really scary”, and it’s not dismissive or condescending. No, if anything, the question offers insight into all of our plights: deep down, we’re curious about what scares us. We’re driven away from the notion, yet, when the opportunity to take even the quickest peek at it arises, safely and in the comfort of our own homes, we devour the opportunity.
Horror is exciting. When people discover my love of the genre, they jump at the chance to ask me about it. Fans, movie goers or not, they want to know what scares me.
So, whenever you find yourself in that situation, facing a person who, unlike you, doesn’t watch a horror movie every night, who hasn’t seen every installment of every horror franchise at least twice and who didn’t spend at good year of their life believing CHILD’S PLAY to be a segment on a late night local news broadcast… tell them what scares you. Tell them what your favorite horror movies are.
But tell them why. Tell them that story. You know the one. And, then, ask them for theirs.
I love horror movies.
So… why do you?
