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Horror flicks have strange effect
(by Barbara Christian - October 29, 2009)
WINDOW ON MAIN STREET, BY BARBARA CHRISTIAN
Horror flicks have strange effect
Do you love going to the movies? Me too. There is a particular kind of movie that can make me drop everything and head over to the Chagrin Cinemas. Horror flicks. Not all of them. They have to be special.
That's why I cannot wait to see "Paranormal Activity." It was made in seven days for under $12,000 and is hyped to be the shivery-est movie ever made.
This new movie is routinely compared to the "Blair Witch Project," which caused a stir, because it was shot in "real-life" documentary style, giving the impression that what the audience was seeing was real-time fact. "Blair Witch" was so authentic looking it sent folks out to the New Jersey Pine Barrens, the setting of the film, to check it out.
"Paranormal Activity" centers on a couple whose home may be haunted. So they set up a video camera in their bedroom to record whatever it is that goes bump in the night. Beyond that, movie reviewers have been good about not giving anything away.
The only clues come from a trailer showing the audience reacting to the film. Their faces and body language testify to its being a terrifying experience.
Fans of this type of movie go to see them, even though they know they will be scared out of their wits, for the same reason others ride roller coasters, the higher and faster the better.
What is going to make this movie challenging is no one I know can abide horror movies, so this will be a solo experience. Friends think I am the bravest person they know. It wasn't always thus.
Before television, kids often reacted to their first big-screen experience by having to be carried out screaming in terror.
Years later, I saw it with my own children and realized it was Dumbo losing his mother that had me squalling like a baby, not fear.
Later it was "Bambi," "The Yearling" and some of the Lassie movies. They were just too sad. Today, I avoid all animal movies unless I know there is a happy ending.
A couple of Christmases ago, I received the then-just-published book "Marley and Me." I had read enough about it to know that it had a tear-jerking ending. "Marley and Me" still sits on the shelf where I put it. Unopened.
Last week, I came across the movie version of "Marley and Me" on TV. Flipped by it so fast you would have thought it was porn.
For animal lovers, sad critter stories are pornographic. I know I am not alone. We weep at the sight of beached and dying whales and oil-covered sea gulls and when they had to shoot that injured race horse right there on the track.
Wish someone would explain why we can sit through movies where terrible things happen to human beings but will not subject ourselves to sad animal stories.
I am pretty sure it says something about our character, and it's probably not good.
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