I am not a horror fan

I love Halloween, but I'm glad it's over.

During the month of October, I watch a lot of horror films. I'm using the word "horror" loosely. What I really mean is that I watch Halloween-type movies. Some are horror, and some aren't (like The Nightmare Before Christmas). Now, I usually try to have a good mix of movies that I haven't seen before and movies that are old favorites, and every year I find at least one new movie that gets added to the "old favorite" category.

Until this year. I didn't find anything good this year, which is crazy because there are so many horror films, and I have relatively few on my list of "old favorites." So I have realized something: I am not a horror fan. That is, I do enjoy a good horror film, but the criteria that I require in order to consider a horror film good are rarely met. So I guess that means that I just don't really like the genre. I don't enjoy gore, profanity, or nudity, so that really narrows down the list of what I consider good. And I don't enjoy stupid horror. Here are some examples of what I mean.

I hate The Exorcist. This is almost universally held to be one of the greatest horror films of all time. But I think that it sucks. Now some people would argue and say that that's just because I'm used to today's special effects and that if I had seen it when it came out it would have scared me to death, but that's just not true. I didn't like The Exorcist because it was too blatant. The little girl gets possessed by a demon and all of the sudden turns into this green monster. It was stupid. People think this is a good movie because it's grotesque, and they mistake their feelings of disgust for fright. The truth is that I didn't feel scared after watching this movie at all; I felt like vomiting, but I didn't feel scared. And I only watched the TV version. The mistake that was made with The Exorcist is that too much is shown. There needs to be more off-camera action so that the audience's imagination can run wild. And there needs to be a feeling of reality brought into the film in order to make it truly frightening. Have you ever seen a person that looks like this?


Neither have I. A little more subtlety would have gone a long way. And by the way, I think it's really stupid how casting out demons is perceived as this elaborate ritual or something. The fact is that if those "priests" actually held the priesthood, all they would have to do is command the demon to leave in the name of Christ, and out it would come!

Poltergeist is another one of those movies that people think is really great but that is actually really not. And the reason is the same: it's too unrealistic. I mean, not that a horror film has to be based on actual events in order to be scary, but the audience should at least be able to identify with what is going on: it should at least feel real within the context of the film. It's like those movies where the adults don't believe in Santa Claus. If Santa existed, then you would think that the adults would know it because their children would be getting all these presents that they didn't buy. It doesn't make sense. So if there are really places in the world where all of the laws of physics are violated, like in Poltergeist, then why have we never heard of these places? You know what I mean? It's too exaggerated.

As an example of something good, take The Sixth Sense. This film is a lot more subtle. For one thing, there's only one person experiencing anything supernatural; it's not just out in the open for everyone to see, so it explains why you wouldn't expect to have experienced something supernatural yourself. For another thing, you know that things that happen in the movie don't happen in real life, but if they did, then this is probably a good depiction of what it would be like. There's a link to reality. But also, it was just a plain old good film. I mean, I'm sorry, but if you knew what the twist was before you watched it for the first time, you were robbed of probably the best twist in cinematic history, and yes, I've seen Fight Club (and I totally saw it coming).

So here are some good horror films, in my opinion. The Shining (TV version, of course), The Sixth Sense, The Ring, The Others, Brigham City (a movie by the LDS director Richard Dutcher, which is surprisingly good but might contain certain elements that are hard to follow for a non-Mormon), Psycho, The Birds (and anything by Alfred Hitchcock really, though most of his stuff is really more in the thriller genre), I Bury the Living, Night of the Living Dead (the original), etc.

On the lighter side of "horror", there's anything by Tim Burton, especially The Nightmare Before Christmas and Beetlejuice, but not Sweeny Todd or Sleepy Hollow; anything that has Vincent Price in it; Young Frankenstein; Hocus Pocus; Gremlins; and my all-time Halloween favorite, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (the 1950s animated classic narrated by good old Bing Crosby himself).

So now that that's over with, bring on Christmas!