On Horror Movies

I find some fascinating, others I find terrifying, and I find many are just plain horrible.

The truly terrible movies are the slasher films. Sure, maybe some people get off on the random nudity paired with mass amounts of blood and meaningless murder, but I, on the other hand, have nightmares about it. No, seriously. I had nightmares after seeing Scary Movie. Stupid + meaningless = scary as s*** to me.

Without regard to my late night reaction to slasher films, I still find them terrible. The murderers have no pattern of victims, except that they are typically women. There’s no pattern in motivation. It’s not even based on opportunity. The utter lack of organization is what I find so unrealistic. Weirdly enough, that fact is the basis of my fear.

Very few non-horror movies have scared me like that. The most prominent one I can think of is The Dark Knight. It was fantastic and fascinating. The villain himself was interesting. However, his complete lack of pattern with regards to his crimes (which, as far as I can tell, is unusual in most criminals) is what frightened me the most. The idea that he could blow up a hospital simply because he felt like it for no apparent reason whatsoever…I couldn’t stop myself from continuously thinking about being in that situation.

On the other hand, I adore well-made movies that delve into the psyche of serial killers. Silence of the Lambs didn’t even give me nightmares. Well, I guess it helped that my friend who had read all the books explained to me the reason behind Hannibal’s murders.

I also loved Case 39 (I think that’s what it’s called; check Netflix). It was bizarre in a completely different way than Silence, but it was interesting. And there was a vague pattern.

So I guess my underlying fear is a lack of pattern. But I’m only human. Our thought processes are based on patterns and categorizing. When I can at least comprehend to a degree the thought pattern of a serial killer, I’m not scared. Actually, that’s probably the reason why I delve into researching any heinous murder/rape case I hear about. To understand it, so that I minimize my chances of being a victim.

I’m f***ing paranoid when it comes to rapists and murderers, and I’m quite sure that’s not a bad thing. Most will go after easy targets, and I make a point to not seem like one. When I would walk home from class in college, I always thought about how I could hurt someone who assaulted me. It always came down to hitting them as hard as I could using my bag with my laptop in it. I can’t live without my laptop. But I still was so paranoid that I planned to kill my laptop if it meant saving myself.

I guess what that really means is that I had thought about exactly how to f*** someone up using my resources at hand even though I had no particular indication that I needed to be concerned. So maybe I’m slightly paranoid, but certainly not unreasonably…right?