Horror, it’s a genre that I have a lot of love for. It’s not too hard to figure out that it’s my favorite genre when it comes to most forms of entertainment (video games not so much). The horror genre has pretty much been my favorite ever since I could remember. True I was a big Star Wars nut as a kid, but nothing got me more excited than when the Halloween specials came along with Nickelodeon, Disney, and Cartoon Network. I honestly don’t even think there’s a genre that even comes close to the same love I have for horror. It’s been my favorite for my whole life and will probably remain my favorite even after I’m long and gone.
As you age, you begin to look back on your life and think about the past. You’ll think about what your childhood was like and everything that went along with it, this usually leading one to think about how one would want to raise their own child. While I may be 19 it isn’t that uncommon to think about these sorts of things at my age. Most people do since we’re about to step out into the real world and enter adulthood. For me personally the thing I always think about in regards to raising a child is how I’d expose them to movies, specifically movies and their ratings.
I was raised by a fairly controlling mother when it came to movies (my dad never really cared). Horror was obviously a big struggling point growing up. Horror tends to showcase a lot more nastiness in content then most other films, and I don’t just mean in terms of gore. The horror genre tends to shed light on themes and subjects about life a lot of people don’t want to talk about, something that makes it so good. Because of this it was hard for me to see a lot of horror movies outside of the classics, which I didn’t really mind consider I did and still do love the old silent movies and Universal monster movies. But as you age you exhaust the well and want to move onto more things. Whether it is supernatural or slasher it was always a battle to see certain films. I had to watch a lot of horror movies on TV up until I was about 15 when my mom just came to the conclusion that I would watch whatever I wanted one way or another, and so she decided to just let me go about my movie watching business with no censoring (though she was and still isn’t a big fan of some of my tastes in cinema).
As a kid being told you can’t do something is you being egged on to try and do something, this never more true with movies or television. If you grow up in an environment which censors what you can and can’t watch a lot you tend to come to the mindset that you will let your kids watch anything they want. But sooner or later you come to your senses and realize that you may need to pace out the material. I can safely say that if my eight year old asked to watch the original Halloween I’d let them, but at the same time if they asked for something like Friday the 13th, I’d say no. Everybody matures and develops at their own pace and you as a parent should try to act accordingly to that. You can go buck wild to a degree on what you allow them to see, but you still have to pull back at some points. I would never let my kid see some of the stuff I’ve reviewed here until they were probably 17, and that’s probably too young for some of them. But my point is that you can still be loose in what they see, but just be aware that everybody develops differently, and what you may or may not have been able to watch when you were growing up may be vastly different to how your child develops with film.
Thinking about all of this makes me reflect on my journey with film, television, music, and games. I thought it might be a little entertaining to share my evolution with one these at some point with you all. And since we’re currently celebrating Hell-O-Ween, why not take some time to talk about how I went about viewing horror films growing up. Whether or not anybody will find this entertaining or not is up in the air, but even if somebody reads it and just finds it slightly interesting how one nerd went from point A to point B with a movie genre, I’d be happy. So sit back and relax as we take a look at my journey with horror.
Our story begins (obviously) with me as a kid. Now I’ll be quite honest, I don’t really remember what the first horror or scary movie I ever saw was. I can barely remember a whole lot of my childhood before the age of 6 without my parents telling me. So I can’t really recall what movie introduced me to the genre. The earliest memory I have though is watching Halloween specials of cartoons and other shows I watched as a kid. The earliest scary movie I can remember seeing was the Disney TV movie Halloween Town. It was about a teenage girl who turns out to not only be a witch, but be a part of a witch family. She ends up getting on a bus which takes her to Halloween Town; a town which as the name suggests is themed around Halloween. It’s like the Nightmare Before Christmas, but without the other worlds. Surprisingly I saw the sequel before the original. Regardless both scared me a bit as a kid. Up until that point I wasn’t use to scary type of stories. The films did the trick and I grew a bit of a fascination with them. I also saw a Halloween themed episode of C.H.I.P.S. at the time about a rock star whose act was very similar to Arthur Brown’s. It fascinated me with how scary it was, mostly because of the way the rock star looked. I thought he was scarier than any of the monsters in Halloween Town. Hell because of him I was scared shitless of KISS for the longest time. But I re watched the episode over and over again. I had this morbid fascination with it. I was scaring myself shitless, but I couldn’t look away. It was the first time in my opinion that I had your typical horror movie reaction to where I was horrified by what I saw, but couldn’t look away. True it was just a Halloween themed episode, but the demonic little spin on it is what made it scary to me as a kid. I watched the episode last year and I have to say, it’s kind of fun to watch now. I’m use to that look now so I’m no longer afraid. Plus it is a little cheesy. Along with those came the movie Hocus Pocus, a film about three witches who steal the life force of children to stay forever beautiful. This once again was scary, even more so then Halloween Town and the C.H.I.P.S. episode. This movie had a cat getting run over, a zombie, a decapitation, and some dark magic aspects to it, and people trying to pretty much kill kids. This thing was terrifying as a little kid! But like the others I loved it. This in the end turned out to be a major stepping stone to my way to being a horror fan.
But this was only the beginning. As the years went on I watched more of these scary movies and TV specials, my interest getting peeked anytime a new one was announced. I was slowly becoming a fan of this genre, and it was Disney which finally turned me into a full blown horror fanatic. When I was five Disney put out a TV movie called Phantom of the Megaplex. It was about these kids who worked at a movie theater and how a phantom was trying to ruin the premiere of a new movie. Like the previous movies I had seen, it scared me for a few years (hey I was young). Now I know what you’re thinking, how did this turn me into a horror fanatic? It was because of what the film was based upon. When I watched the film for probably the hundredth time, my mom told me that it was a take on a story called The Phantom of the Opera. I didn’t know what that was, but I was interested to find out. A week later my mom brought home the Claude Raines version of POTO and my world changed forever. I watched my first ever horror film with it and I fell in love almost immediately. Sure it isn’t the scariest film ever, and it’s not much of a horror film, but back then it blew me away. Because of this film I became obsessed with not only Phantom, but with the classic Universal monsters. Before the movie there was a promo that talked about some of the other monster movies, and it soon became my mission to watch every one of these.
My library card records soon became filled with films like Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolfman, Werewolf of London, Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Invisible Man, Frankenstein, and Abbot and Costello Meet movies. Along with these came the flood of POTO adaptations, the main ones being the Webber version, the Chaney version, the Hammer version, and the Charles Dance version. My house’s TVs soon became filled with nothing but images of monsters, and I loved every second of it. My dreams became filled with the same monsters, they haunting me as I slept. I was obsessed with horror, and this is when my love for the genre truly started. As weird as it sounds, the whole reason I became a fan of horror is because of Disney. It was their TV movies that they played around Halloween that gave me my first forays into the genre, and it was one in particular which acted as the key that opened the floodgates to the genre itself. Not only did Disney introduce me to horror, but it introduced me to one of my favorite stories of all time with Phantom of the Opera. Without Disney, I probably wouldn’t be the film lover I am and while I may have come to like the horror genre later, it would not have been the deep love that Disney provided.
I was now on the horror bandwagon, and the trip was only just beginning. As I continued to age, the Universal classics were what I mainly watched. They were pretty much all I cared about for the most part. I tried to watch Jeepers Creepers as a kid because I thought the cover to the second movie was cool, but I wasn’t allowed. But I didn’t mind so much, I had my monster movies. I soon became “that kid” in school, the one who watched all of these weird movies. This moniker has stuck with me forever and has transcended movies and leaked into music, TV, and literature. I was that kid who watched monster movies and it showed with some of the drawings I would do for art class.
At this point I was contempt with what I had in terms of horror films. Most of what I was watching was either the Universal stuff, or some kiddy ones that came along like The Little Vampire, which had my scared for a long time as a kid (ironic isn’t it?). But with age came the desire to see more, and my sites became set on watching more and more stuff, which means I was jumping into the pool of more mature/not so kid friendly movies. When I was in my preteens my mother started to let me watch more horror films, she showing me what she liked. This included films like Poltergiest, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Shining which also introduced me to Stephen King. These movies were unlike anything I had seen at that point. These weren’t the simple monster movies I was use to; these films had an edge to them. They were about the supernatural, but delved into the darker nature of the supernatural. Gone was simple films about witches and wizards, these were Satanic in nature. Poltergiest was my introduction to really intense and scary ghost films, The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby were when I learned about the occult in a more hardcore fashion and learned about satanic rituals and prophecies, and The Shining was my introduction to movies that relied on very intense visuals to shock and scare you. But it also had another purpose; it was my formal introduction to Stephen King.
With The Shining now under my belt I now knew who the proclaimed master of horror was. I knew of him only because my mom had a ton of his books on her bookshelves, but I had never read them, mostly because they were so big. Now I was interested though. I didn’t watch more of his films at this point but went to his books. I read Carrie which became one of my favorite books and movies of all time. As time went on I also read Christine and Pet Semetery. I soon watched these films and ended up loving them. But while they gave me a few chills, nothing, and I mean nothing had me having nightmares on such a frequent basis then IT did. IT was the first movie to truly terrify me. I may have been scared by the monster movies, but IT was a different beast, it had me pissing myself in fear. I discovered IT one Saturday afternoon in a state of boredom. I was flipping channels trying to find something to watch. I then came to ABC Family which was playing the movie (because a movie about a demonic kid killing clown is totally a family film). At first I thought it was a Bozo the Clown movie, and I was interested in watching it because I had only head of Bozo but not watched him. I was soon proved wrong. I bore witness to the bathroom scene and the scene with Seth Green in the basement. I was left speechless and motionless and didn’t want to watch. But I kept doing so. I was petrified but I couldn’t stop watching. The film had that horror effect on me. My mom eventually came home and found me walking around the house saying IT over and over, she soon figuring out what I was talking on about. After being counseled for an hour I was fine and grew a hatred for Stephen King. I refused to read or watch his stuff afterwards due to being traumatized by the movie, I even developing a fear of clowns. For years Pennywise haunted me. Eventually though after watching all of Pennywise’s scenes on Youtube to try and cure myself of my fear, I did just that. I was no longer afraid of Pennywise or IT. I stopped hating Stephen King a while back, but IT was still a nightmare to me. But now it wasn’t, it was just another scary movie. Years later any lingering fear I had was completely obliterated when I watched the Nostalgia Critic’s review of the movie and saw the movie as nothing more than a funny movie.
With my fear in check I now embraced King fully and read more of his works, and of course saw more of his films. The last ones I’ve seen that I never saw being Children of the Corn (both versions) and Salem’s Lot, and those happened about a year after I got over my IT fear. In between all of this I continued my horror journey. With cable in my room I could now watch TCM and watch older horror movies and older films as a whole. My mom continued to show me horror films every so often, she showing me ones she liked and thought were good and scary. But by this point I was in my preteens and teenage years. I had seen supernatural films and monster movies. I was a growing boy and had exhausted my well. I needed something new. I needed something to get to me like the movies did when I was a kid. I wanted something to chill me like IT did. I wanted the movies I had heard about but was told I could not see. I wanted the slashers.
Like many kids my age with parents that are trying to do the best for their kids, I was not allowed to watch slasher movies. I was downright forbidden to see these. Even by age thirteen I couldn’t see them. I knew about Michael Myers, Jason, Freddy, Chucky, Ghostface, and Leatherface though thanks to kids at school talking about them. With me now using the internet frequently, I used it to my advantage. I didn’t know you could watch movies online yet, so I did the best thing at the time; I went to Wikipedia. On Wikipedia I read about the movies and their respective series. If I couldn’t watch the films I would damn sure at least read about them. I even Google Imaged from time to time to get snippets of the films to enhance the imagery I was forming in my head. But alas, I only had my summaries of the movies and was still unable to watch. Slasher movies have always been thought of a rite of passage, it almost being as if once you watch one, you’re truly a man. I was being denied my rite to become a man. Of course this was until I discovered the miracle of TV stations outside of what I watched. But in particular, AMC, MTV, and SyFy.
It was with these channels that I came to see these forbidden fruit. SyFy offered me my first Hellraiser movie in Hellworld. MTV gave me the Dawn of the Dead remake, the House of Wax remake, Scream 3, and eventually My Super Psycho Sweet 16. One of those regular old channels that everybody gets with a TV offered me a brief glimpse of Child’s Play, the scene in question being that of the babysitter being knocked out of the window. That scene scared me from how brutal it was, as did the others. I wasn’t use to violence in my horror movies, my cinematic violence was with action movies and anime (while kids grew up with martial arts and magical girls, I had ultraviolent samurai and sci-fi that was bloody as all hell). The newfound violence obviously offered a bit of fright to me. Of course though I dare not tell my parents of these. I may as well have been watching porno. Telling my parents, especially my mom that I was watching slasher movies was instant punishment. True they were edited, but this wasn’t the 1980s or 90s were you had to crack down on editing movies. Oh no, these channels kept the violence intact for a good chunk of the film. I had now seen slasher films and I loved them. The love of them probably being because of how violent they were as well as the fact that they were forbidden fruit. But this was only the beginning. For AMC was about to show me what I truly wanted. It showed me the night he came home.
By this point I knew about these TV stations showing horror movies close to nonstop in October. It had become a tradition to watch as many as I could. I still did my own personal yearly horror marathon where I marathoned some of my favorite horror movies, but the TV soon replaced that tradition. And it was in my fourteenth year that I finally saw Michael Myers in all of his glory. I scrolled through the TV guide one day and discovered that Halloween would be played that night. I was dead set on watching it and hatched the plan to watch it under my parent’s noses. The film was going to be on at eight PM, by that time my dad would be watching his TV shows and my mom would be home from work and wanting to relax. I was ready to finally see the movie that had been hyped up. But I got a little chicken and didn’t watch the movie, I opting instead to watch Nick at Nite. However I was in luck, for at ten PM out of curiosity I flipped to AMC, just in time for Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers to start up. It wasn’t the first one, but it was a Halloween movie, and I was ready to watch it. Two hours later I sat in front of my TV in shock at what I had just seen. Something clicked inside my head that night, the click being that I had just found a movie I really loved. I was mesmerized by the violence (I still remember sitting there in shock when the girl was stabbed with the shotgun and how my jaw dropped when Michael destroyed Brady’s face), and I was scared. Michael was truly the terrifying boogeyman he was said to be. I was now determined to see the original. The gods smiled upon me again, for the next night they showed the original, four, and five. In the cover of night (and a lot of flipping back and forth to avoid being found out) I watched all three of these movies. By the time they were done I was scared and in love. I had found the series that would become my favorite series of horror movies of all time, as well as my favorite horror movie of all time.
With Halloween under my belt, it was time to tackle the others. Friday and Nightmare came early the next year when I was able to catch Freddy VS Jason one morning on the USA Network. I was utterly blown away by the film. I had known of it for years, as a friend of mine wanted to show me the movie when it first came out when we were kids, but I refused knowing I’d get in trouble. But I was ready now, and in the end I enjoyed every last minute of Freddy VS Jason. A few months later on an actual Friday the 13th, Spike played the original Friday movie and I became a fan of the series then and there, I sitting there in the shock of seeing Kevin Bacon being slaughtered (why did she have to kill Ren, why!?). That Halloween AMC delivered again and for a whole week showed every Friday film, well 4 through 7 and Jason Goes to Hell to be exact. Within that week I took in so much gore that I was on a bloodlust for more. Like the previous Halloween I had found a favorite series and another favorite movie. Nightmare was slow to follow though. I could never find one on TV, it seemed only Jason and Michael got to shine. But Freddy came eventually a year later when I bought New Nightmare at a used book store. By this point I was so use to gore that I had become desensitized, unscareable you could say. New Nightmare changed that, for even though I watched it in the afternoon I was scared. Wes Craven had me scared years before with Scream, but now he was really getting under my skin. With that I started buying and watching the other films and while they were good, they were never as good or scary as New Nightmare. I had finally seen the three kings though, and it felt good to have seen what every other teenager has seen. All secretly of course, until I was 15 though. By that point I started sharing my opinions more on horror films, my late night watches coming to light. Surprisingly my mom didn’t care, she probably figured I would have seen them at some point and I guess just gave up. I’m a stubborn person and when I want something, I go after it, especially with movies. Telling me no is just encouraging me, and I get what I want eventually.
But slashes weren’t the only films I was digging up. For it was time to watch a movie heralded by almost everybody. The film in question was The Exorcist. Hearing of how scary it was, I was ready to be terrified. I decided to watch it at midnight to be in the right mood. I sat on my bed and two hours later I had finished the film. It was indeed a good film, but I wasn’t scared. The film that had apparently caused women to miscarry didn’t even faze me. I could understand why it was terrifying to people, after all a film about a child being possessed by the devil and masturbating with a crucifix was bound to frighten people. I also understand why it was so controversial; you didn’t really have movies like that at the time. Yes there were films that dealt with Satan, but never like this. But still I wasn’t scared. I think the reason it didn’t scare me and still doesn’t scare me is because by the time I saw it I was watching mostly slasher films. Instead of stuff that is actually scary such as supernatural themes, I was watching nothing but violence. Because of this I became desensitized. By watching movies that focused on violence for shocks I was unable to be truly scared anymore. Regardless of the film scaring me though, I was still able to walk away thinking it was good, just not as terrifying as people made it out to be.
Now with the slashers and most of the classic modern horror films under my belt, there wasn’t much left for me to see at the time. Especially since in-between the slashers I dipped into more crazy stuff such as the Saw films. Those movies disgusted me more then they scared me, but that’s the point to those types of films. So at this point there wasn’t much else to see. But I was the informative type with my love for movies, especially horror. Thanks to reading books and internet articles I soon learned of the Evil Dead, another film which left me in shock and awe. It wasn’t because it was scary, but because of how it was filmed and because of how great the effects were. Before that I had finally watched two classics with Night of the Living Dead and the original Dawn of the Dead. I was knocking out films left and right and finishing up series I hadn’t finished. I finally saw all of the Child’s Play films, bought and viewed the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and even more films. Some movies though I only knew of but couldn’t find such as Zombi. Some though came to my room soon enough. Thanks to specials Fear Net did about John Carpenter and Wes Craven, I came to know of their early work. Assault on Precinct 13 for Carpenter, and the infamous Last House on the Left and equally shocking Hills Have Eyes for Craven. I was watching stuff that was controversial now; the forbidden fruit feeling returned but was upped. There was a certain satisfaction to watch a movie that was banned in other countries. Last House also helped introduce me to exploitation cinema, but I was already into that stuff thanks to good old Quentin Tarrantino. The internet was truly supplying me with my knowledge of the genre, and it was also about to introduce me to some of my favorites.
Internet personalities have introduced me to a lot of great things, whether they be TV shows, video games, books, and of course movies. One in particular though was able to introduce me to a sub genre that I have a lot of love and respect for. James Rolfe A.K.A. The Angry Video Game Nerd has a special every October where he reviews horror films. When watching the backlog of the older ones I came across old silent horror films. I learned about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, The Golem, The Man Who Laughs, and The Cat and The Canary. The first three specifically though were eye openers to me, as they introduced me to German Expressionism. These films had weird architecture and environments, everything was curved and shadows could be found almost everywhere. I’ve always loved abstract art and these combined my favorite form of art with my favorite genre of movies. These films soon rose to being some of my favorites of not just the genre, but of film as a whole, as well as one of my favorite directors in F.W. Murnau and one of my favorite actors in Conrad Veidt.
But AVGN wasn’t the only personality providing horror goodness. The Cinema Snob (who I reference somewhat frequently here) also introduced me to some horror films I’ve come to like. The Snob mostly reviews Z grade films but has dabbled with more mainstream/popular releases as of late. Obviously though it’s the Z grade stuff I am going to speak of. A friend introduced me to the Snob by showing me his review of Sleepaway Camp. I had heard of the movie, but only because of a Robot Chicken sketch. But thanks to my friend and mister Snob, I now knew all about Sleepaway Camp. I watched the rest of his reviews on the series and loved them. What came next was me learning about the film Maniac, and getting to see footage of Silent Night, Deadly Night, which was a movie I had only heard of but saw nothing of. These three threw more clay onto the sculpture that was my love and knowledge of the horror genre. The internet has been good to me for years in both being able to make friends and learn about things that interest me, as well as introduce me to new interests. Movies have benefited the most from this, and thanks to Mr. Rolfe and Jones I was able to grow even more as a fan of my beloved horror genre.
At this point I was 18 and was pretty much at my fill with horror. I had seen virtually all I wanted and while there were still films I wanted to see, I wasn’t hunting them down like I was. I wouldn’t say that I was burnt out; it’s just that I had everything I really wanted at that point. I had classics to watch still but other interests kept me from doing so. In a sense I was kinda stalled out with horror. But then I opened the floodgates, and it took the same friend who introduced me to The Cinema Snob to do so.
My friend is a big fan of Creepypasta and anytime we hang out she always shows me some. To be perfectly honest, I think Creepypasta suck. The stories aren’t that scary and are pretty uninteresting. I told her this one day and she uttered the classic comeback many people do: “If you think you can do better, write one.” I took that challenge up and decided to write a short scary story. I eventually decided to make my own adaption of a Japanese urban legend about a woman known as Kuchisake-onna. I’m not entirely sure why but while I could easily describe Japan and make the characters authentic in how they spoke as far as grammar goes, I wanted to nail that Japanese horror atmosphere. I decided I’d look up and view a few Japanese horror movies to try and get myself in the right mood. And it was this that pushed me down the rabbit hole of J-Horror and Japanese cinema as a whole.
I became obsessed with what I read and started buying up films like crazy. My buying wasn’t just of Japanese horror though, I went into the territory of Korean and Hong Kong horrors. I now had a new obsession and these films quickly became some of my favorite in both horror cinema and cinema as a whole. I came to know of directors who are now some of my favorites such as Takashi Miike, Shinya Tsukamoto, Takashi Shimizu, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and many more. Films like Audition, A Tale of Two Sisters, Marebito, Ju-On, Ab-normal Beauty, and countless others invaded my favorite horror movies list. These things were like a plague, and I was infected majorly. Soon in my quest for more knowledge came my discovery of underground AV Horror films, and that’s where the obsession was taken to all new heights. Films like the Guinea Pig series, Niku Daruma, the works of Hisayasu Sato, Muzan-E, Red Room, Concrete, and many others soon became what I wanted to watch. By the end of 2013 I had spent over nearly $200 on nothing but Asian movies. While the early Disney films and Universal monster movies made me into a horror fan, it was the Asians which ignited a new fire within me to watch horror. But more importantly these films opened me up to the world of Asian cinema as a whole. Before then I had only seen Tokusatsu and Kung Fu/action movies. But it took getting into horror to get me in love with the continents stockpile of cinema. Horror turned into drama, drama turned into pinku, pinku turned into romance, comedy, thriller, epics, it all snowballed and helped me fall in love even more with Japan and Asia as a whole. I’d say that it took me writing that story and watching Audition that turned me into a full on film lover. Because of that I truly think that my discovery of Asian cinema transcends horror, these films changed my view on film and with some, my view on life.
The discovery of Asian horror and cinema as a whole spelled the death to a degree of my long time horror movie obsession. I was still watching and discovering horror, but I was looking at the broader picture and taking in all genres and countries. This made it hard to focus only on horror. But you eventually return to what you love. This year has reignited the horror obsession. After years of shunning his work because of a horrendous adaptation of Phantom of the Opera, I finally decided to try the films of Dario Argento. What followed was another case of instant love. I now love and praise Dario Argento a whole heck of a lot. His film Opera A.K.A. Terror at the Opera has become one of my favorite films of all time and I even claim it to be one of the best movies of all time. Along with this, his films have influenced my own visual style in terms of filmmaking. I also began looking more at Lucio Fulci’s catalogue, wanting to see if another Italian could impress me. But I also soon returned to the slasher genre. I was now using the internet to full use to find my Asian films, Youtube and all. I decided I’d try to see if I could dig up any obscure slasher films for the shits and giggles, and I did thanks to a review website called a Slash Above (a site that I now write for), a website dedicated to reviewing nothing but slasher films. I soon discovered a world of slashers I had never known about, and it spiked my interest in the genre again. A perfect example of this being of my discovery and instant love for the movie The Prowler. I also have begun to look at the works of Clive Barker and finally sat down and watched Hellraiser, a film which managed to actually disturb me. My horror viewing has slowed down a bit, but if the current trend keeps up, things should return to the pace it was from ages six to seventeen.
For thirteen years now I have been an avid fan of horror films. These movies have shaped my childhood and teenage years pretty much. I evolved as a person with the movies and they’re probably the easiest way to see how I aged. Has anything changed from when I was a little kid watching Disney movies and TV specials? I’m not really scared that much by horror films anymore. I say as much because with the introduction of the A-horror I was able to step away from gore gore gore and see how people setup genuine scares. Quite a few of these films have been able to scare me (Ju-On, Ju-Rei, A Tale of Two Sisters, The Eye) and some have even disturbed me and made me feel sick (Ab-normal Beauty, Red Room, Niku Daruma). Even some of the non Asian ones I have seen lately have gotten me a bit scared. The Prowler had me jump quite a few times, and even after seeing a lot of sick shit thanks to the Japanese, Hellraiser was able to make me feel sick to the core. So while I’m not easily scared or grossed out anymore, there are still things that can get under my skin and make things come close to spilling out of my throat. As you get older, your tolerance level grows more and more, and with horror it happens rapidly. A film that could scare you as a kid could no longer do so. Horror fans are constantly evolving with how horror movies affect them, which is what makes the genre so great.
Horror is a genre that is not for anybody. It challenges many taboos and tends to do so in a manner that is in your face. They reveal the dark side of humanity and of life as a whole. They are films that are willing to go places where most films won’t. They constantly challenge the viewer with what they’re willing to watch both morally and how much they can handle in scares and shocks. I think this makes horror the best genre ever. While films can be similar, it is a genre that constantly evolves and is able to challenge its viewer time after time. People will actually debate for hours about characters in these films, something that you don’t see that often with movies outside the genre.
But horror is also something we all grow up with. Many kids grow up watching horror films, they doing so as a yearly ritual for Halloween, they ready to be scared. Many of the movies in the genre act as rites of passages. I would even be willing to say that a horror film is the first movie a kid will probably try to sneak into their house and watch. The genre has such a drawing power to it outside of violence, tits, and people wearing makeup. It’s able to unite people under one banner and while the people under the banner will argue, it’s only natural as everybody has different tastes.
Horror to me is something very important. I hold the genre in a special place in my heart and it’s something I will always love. It introduced me to worlds of cinema I never knew existed or thought I would love. It introduced me to some of my favorite directors, actors, and authors. It helped shape how I look at the world. Most importantly it helped shape who I am as a person. Horror has had a major influence on how I draw, on how I write, on how I think of life, and how I want to spend my time on this plane of existence. Horror is the reason I have set out on a journey to become a filmmaker and writer. It’s been with me for as long as I can remember and will always be with me. To some it’s a simple and silly genre that has no meaning. To me and millions of others it’s something bigger than life and something that can bring strangers together and make us as humans’ better people. It’s a way for us to start careers. To the fans of the world and to me, horror is life. And like the world, it keeps on evolving.
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