Scaring ourselves to pieces
Advertisements for horror movies used to promise to scare people to death. “Persons with heart problems will not be allowed in the theatre,” they’d announce, although we don’t remember anyone presenting a medical certificate to get into the screenings. These ads and trailers were generally scarier than the movies themselves.
However, there’s still nothing scarier than going home after watching a middling horror movie, then replaying the movie in your head in the dead of night. Your imagination is more terrifying than anything a filmmaker can show you. Two examples: Seven and Zodiac by David Fincher. He doesn’t show you the actual murders, you have to strain to see the figures on the dark screen, but your mind fills in the blanks and the result is horror.
We saw the trailer for the Sam Raimi-produced movie The Possession (originally The Dybbuk Box) when we went to see Hope Springs. Sold! We’re there on opening day!
Have we mentioned that we love Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell?
Come to think of it, Hope Springs is our notion of horror: Being married for 31 years to someone you don’t have sex with and barely speak to anymore, who doesn’t even look at you and complains constantly of what things cost, whose idea of an anniversary present is a new water heater. Aaaiiiiiiiiiieeeeeee! Meryl Streep is wonderful, as always. Only she could make us watch this movie. Tommy Lee Jones is funny. Elizabeth Shue turns up for 90 seconds, Mimi Rogers for 30. The French movie the couple watch is Le Diner de Cons, which was remade as Dinner for Schmucks starring Steve Carell who plays the therapist in the movie.
Trivia. We know someone who, as a student at Georgetown, lived in the house where The Exorcist was shot. Tourists would sometimes knock on the door and request a tour.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
August 26th, 2012 at 13:38
The Possession seems to remind me of The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror stories. Then again, a lot of horror films have pretty much been skewered by that animated family.
Speaking of horror films, Rosemary’s Baby will see a Criterion re-release pretty soon.
August 26th, 2012 at 19:00
I actually find horror movies funny. I don’t know, but whenever the monsters/demons/spirits appear, I rupture my lungs laughing. Perhaps it’s defense mechanism or my humor is just twisted and sinister. It’s just that I find the special effects hilarious, especially how the makeup looks on the ghosts and demons (e.g. Insidious).
When I was watching The Lady in Black with a friend, I was in hysterics while she was sinking further into her seat and shrieking with terror at the startling bits. I couldn’t help laughing and unknown to us, another friend who was with a date five rows in front of us heard my familiar giggling–it’s kinda rude, me still cackling like crazy while the audience’s shock had died down. Our other friend nudged her boyfriend and pointed out her suspicion that I might be there. Like me, this other friend also laughs her guts out at horror flicks (So it isn’t just defense mechanism–unless that’s how we both handle shock). When the lights switched on, she confirmed her suspicion when we saw one another. Her boyfriend had been asking her, ‘Ba’t ka ba tawa nang tawa? Horror ‘to!’ To which she had answered, ‘E nakakatawa e, at alam ko na ang mangyayari.’
The movies I find scary are No Country for Old Men and The Prestige. It’s to do with the atmosphere. Like Zodiac and Seven, the murders aren’t shown on No Country and the sang froid and doggedness of Javier’s character plus that ridiculous haircut made me resolve never to see that movie again (although I downloaded it for future watching, how silly). In The Prestige, I can’t imagine dying every performance night uncertain if my clone would materialize and remember the pain of drowning.
August 26th, 2012 at 23:24
We also laugh hysterically at horror movies! And roller coaster rides! Can’t stop ourselves.
We are also extremely calm in a crisis, but get worked up over trifles.