(Serious spoiler alert: I'm gonna talk a lot about the plots of various horror movies, most of which have been out for a long time, but anyway, if you don't want to know anything about the plots of certain horror movies, you might wanna skip this blog post. Thank you.)
I guess it is kind of weird for a Buddhist to like horror movies. I mean, so much about Buddhism is cultivating certain states of mind, none of which involve being scared silly. I've been trying to figure out if I like horror movies because I don't have enough immediate threats to life and limb to appreciate the life I have, or if it's because life itself is scary and sometimes you just need that reduced to a screen and a plot and a couple of actors. Regardless, I have always been a big fan of horror movies. I lied to my parents that "Kingdom of the Spiders," starring William Shatner (!), was a National Geographic special that I needed to see for school so I could stay up and watch it. I think I was nine. I was also very good at going to a movie theater for some kiddie movie and sneaking into something else, which is how I got to see Poltergeist when I was maybe ten or eleven.
(For parents: The biggest problem with horror movies, and scary things generally, for kids is not having anybody to talk to about what scared them and why. If you're sneaking into horror movies, like I did, you will perpetually lack that somebody to talk to. So I'm just sayin', if your kid wants to see a scary movie, you might do better to just let them see it, or maybe see it with them, and then talk about it afterwards. What was scary? Why was that scary? What do they think the characters could have done better to improve the situation? Is there anything going on in kid's life that is similarly scary, and if so, what does kid think would help? Serious learning experiences possible here.)
There is a huge spectrum of horror movies, and I only like one very narrow stripe of that spectrum. I don't like slasher or serial killer movies. I'm not all that interested in zombies or found footage. What I like is A. a strong female protagonist, B. a situation where something supernatural is going on, C. a Big Deep Dark Dirty Secret that needs to be revealed, and D. a twist ending, the more mind blowing the better. If you want to see how this pattern works without being scared silly, there's a movie called Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, that follows it exactly. (Okay, there are a few scary moments. But it's not a scary movie. It's more of a sci fi/thriller. And Sandra Bullock is amazing in it.)
I've been thinking a lot about this, and I think what makes a scary movie scary is the unexpected. I mean, to some degree we all know that the protagonist will make a bunch of dumb decisions to invite the threat, the threat will get worse, and the situation will continue to deteriorate until they get out alive, or don't. Kind of like an opera, in a way. But the unexpected is what makes it truly scary.
Here's where I start talking about movie plots. You have been warned.
I try to avoid all reviews of horror movies until after I see them, and I usually only like seeing them in a crowded theater (appropriately masked) in amongst a bunch of other people that are jumping at the jump scares. So I try to either see them opening weekend or skip them entirely. Another reason to be choosy about my horror movies as that can get pricey.
Here's how I ended up seeing The Ring, American version with Naomi Watts, which is in my top five list of best scary movies of all time and probably the one that scared me the most. (The Japanese original is also fantastic for different reasons.) Joan was away at a conference and I took myself out to a scary movie in the San Diego Gaslamp district called "Ghost Ship." It was not very scary and kind of dumb. I went back to the box office and said, "Scarier. I want scarier." The guy selling tickets said a new movie called The Ring had just come out and he'd heard it was very scary but it wasn't playing there, it was at a theater about 2 blocks away. So I walked down there and saw it. (You can do that in the Gaslamp, it's pretty safe even at 10 pm.)
Well, The Ring scared the pants off me, broke my heart and then, just when I thought it was all over, scared the pants off me again. So there I was with a broken heart and no pants. I was totally unprepared for the scary little girl crawling out of the TV set and coming to kill you. I'd never seen anything like that before. I was so blown away I dragged my wife to see The Ring and I don't think I'll ever get her to another scary movie again ever. She said later that the scary little girl was along the lines of seeing Star Wars for the first time, in that opening shot where the giant space ship fills the entire screen and just seems to go on forever. That had never been done before (yeah, they do it all the time now, but hey, I was eight years old and ILM was all new). That's a wow moment. The scary little girl was a holy shit moment.
The thing is, you're never expecting the unthinkable til it happens. I mean before 9-11 who would think a bunch of extremists would fly airplanes into buildings? Besides the Department of Homeland Security, we need a Department of Worst Case Scenarios, where a bunch of people with a really sordid view of human nature and great imaginations sit around thinking up the worst things people could possibly do to each other so we'll be prepared for them when they happen or better yet, before. (My nominee: Smuggling a nuclear time bomb into the Port of Los Angeles in a shipping container. Those shipping containers are like giant UPS trucks full of anonymous packages and there's no way to check everything that's in there. I'm just sayin'. Sleep tight.) The guys who write the really good horror movies are all about worst case scenarios. Just when you think it can't get any worse, it gets worse again. And then something you never saw coming happens right in front of you.
Ferexample: Hostel, which was not a very good movie really. But I happened to see it on opening weekend before all the hype. I knew nothing about it, had no expectations and aside from the dialogue, which is terrible, the first 45 minutes of that film are just electrifying. These kids are on vacation in Eastern Europe and members of their party just keep disappearing. You don't know why. Takahashi Miike, director of the great Japanese horror movies Audition and Three Extremes, has a cameo that you'd think would warn the kids off, but no. And there is one hell of a twist ending involving a German businessman the kids met on the train on their way out to Eastern Europe turning up at the end for a pivotal scene that I'm not sure I can explain except that it made me cry and I wondered for days if emotional repression creates serial killers because I kind of think maybe it does.
And Alien, which has nothing supernatural going on whatsoever but the whole series is so great and imaginative that I love it anyway. The baby alien bursting out of John Hurt's chest was a similar "never saw that coming" moment. (I saw a parody once where the baby alien had on a top hat and cane and began dancing and singing "Hello mah baby, hello mah darlin', hello mah ragtime ga-aaal...") I actually saw Aliens way before I saw Alien, and I saw it at a drive in when I was about 16. My scariest iconic moment from that movie was when the beleaguered party of Marines was tracking the approaching aliens with a scope. "Twenty feet. Fifteen feet. Ten feet." One guy says, "That's impossible. That's inside the room." "Five feet," says the first guy. And then the aliens fall on them from inside the ceiling. I don't think I slept with the lights off for more than a month.
Some gems in the Jeniverse horror movie firmament are The Ring, The Grudge, Shutter, Reincarnation (I think there's only a Japanese version of this one) and the Insidious series. Shutter, though. Shutter is almost perfect. If you can find the original Thai version from 2004, see that, but the American remake wasn't bad either. I got to the end of Shutter and suddenly realized that what I thought was going on was maybe not what was going on and was there really a ghost or wasn't there and I had to go back and watch it again and to be totally honest, I'm still not sure I know the answer. That's how a good horror movie works, folks. It leaves you with more questions than answers and it's kind of up to you to fill in the gaps.
Also, if you like horror movies and you haven't seen The Cabin in the Woods, you'd be well advised to check it out. Yes, it's Joss Whedon, yes, I know he's evil, but it's a very cerebral horror film that talks a lot about horror tropes and audience expectations. When I saw it, though, I didn't get that. I just thought it was an unusually bad, misogynistic horror film until my friend Rhett explained it to me. Then I had to go back and see it again and sure 'nuff... (boy, did I feel dumb).
Anyway. Alien Romulus premieres next week and I wanna be there on opening day. Yes, they're the same critters from the Alien movies before that and I pretty much know what they do and what's gonna happen, but every entry in the series has been an absolute nailbiter and I wouldn't miss this for all the laser space rifles in the space Marine Corps. Then I'll go back to cultivating positive states of mind and all that. Cheers!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment