I am new to the horror movie genre. Well, relatively. I've only been watching them for about a year now. Before then, I couldn't get into them. As a child, I would be scared easily and I couldn't handle pretty much anything scary whatsoever. But as I grew up, I started watching more and more thrillers, so I learned how to handle things that can get into your head and freak you out more and more. But there is a difference between thrillers and horror, so why suddenly the change of heart?
Well, I can honestly say it started with the show 'Supernatural'. They deal with a lot of things that are on the more freaky side. I first tried the series when I was at Ecola Bible School, and the show made me feel uncomfortable, as if I was committing some sort of sin by watching the show. After all, generally shows that involve demons usually aren't' smiled upon by Christians. When I came back to the show a year later, I was in film school, and things were different. I was more into the art of filmmaking. I had matured to the point where I was able to watch it and separate the art from the content. But I still found the content really cool. Why? Because the show depicts spiritual warfare! Spiritual warfare is something many Christians shy away from. I feel like we don't think about the spiritual battles being waged around us constantly. Supernatural, while not Biblically sound, was able to physicalize a spiritual battleground, which I find fascinating. In fact, it grew my faith in that I thought about the battles being waged around me. I grew aware of them. Which, I think is a good thing, especially living in Hollywood, where there is much evil that people are unaware of.
Then, I befriended Scott Derrickson, last year, who directed Sinister. Sinister was the first horror film that I saw in theaters. It was then I understood. Good cerebral horror movies know how to scare you. Not GORE movies. I hate gore movies. They put themselves under the horror genre, but I really don't think they belong there.
I walked out of Sinister with a new interest: Why do horror movies scare us? It's something I love figuring out. I really love the feeling of being scared. But why do these movies scare us? What filmmaking tactics are most effective and most well received? It's fascinating! Beyond that, what are the subconscious tactics they use? I have a lot of fears in my life, fears of the future mostly, which causes anxiety, etc. But with horror movies, I know exactly what's scaring me. It's right there on the screen and in the soundtrack. I love figuring out why the good horrors are good and the bad horrors are bad. It's a lot of fun! The feeling of not knowing what is going to happen next is one of the most thrilling things I've ever experienced. But the difference between not knowing what is going to happen next in a movie, and not knowing what is going to happen next in life is that you know the movie will be over in 2 hours. Life is more scary because you don't know when things will be resolved. I like things in life to be resolved, so when they aren't quickly, I hate it. But with movies, they take us out of the real world, scare us for two hours, then throw us back out. It's also the throwing us back out that is interesting to me too. Horror movies don't keep me up at night, but they do make me think.
Horrors usually have something to do with killers or ghosts or monsters, or all three. Killers and monsters don't have an overall effect on me, unless the monsters are demons, because I know demons are real. So it leaves ghosts (and demons). Those are the ones that scare me most. They scare me because I don't understand them, yet I know they are both real to either some extent (ghosts) or to a long extent (demons). These movies make me think about the spiritual world like no other genre can do. That's a major reason I love these movies. For me, God has used them in my life to make me more aware of the battles that are raging around us, the battles we can't see.
And, it has made me more aware of the incredible Godly protection I am under. And I love that.
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