With so many movie genres in the world, why are we so fascinated with horror films? We hate our selves while we are seeing splatter on the screen. We cringe in fear as we hear the stingers in the music. We laugh at the completely impossible concepts presented. We ask ourselves "Why is she diving into a tank of formaldehyde?" Yet we continually pay homage and hard earned dollars to see torture-porn, 80s icons and mutated animals compliments of Hollywood.
For some, the reason is to face fear itself. Some people genuinely love the endorphin rush caused by getting sucked into a movie where a psychotic Christian Bale is chasing them with a chainsaw through his penthouse apartment. We need to know we are brave enough to stand up to the most insane traps in which Freddy and Jason put us.
We need to root for the people Jigsaw has put in his contraption. On other occasions, we need to root for Jason, Freddy and Jigsaw as they eliminate people we find utterly deplorable. These are the horror fan's Steelers, Patriots and Vikings. We understand why Hannibal Lecter kills the rude and serves the despicable their own brains. We would not do it ourselves, same as we would not kill the child molester up the road. But we can understand those people who want to do it for us. Some people may say things like "I could just kill them." but we are the fans who look at the logical and illogical consequences of that action and see what we are for it.
Most importantly, we know that horror movies are a reflection of ourselves. Alien scared us because we were scared of our body, of the unknown, the dark and things that crawled. Freddy scared us because we were afraid that what our parents did may, some day, come back to haunt us. Hannibal scared us because he showed us that not all monsters are giant lizards, they are the well educated guy up the road. The Bad Seed showed us that not all the psychos of the world are the grownups. Horror films are a reflection of ourselves. We look at them while they look at us.
No comments:
Post a Comment