COLUMNIST

Oh, the horror

Scary movies don’t have the lure they once had

Horror movies just aren’t what they used to be.

No, scratch that. It’s not that a good horror movie these days is necessarily going to be bad, although there are some real turkeys out there. It’s that my attitude about the genre has shifted over the years.

These days, I can’t quite stomach it.

Granted, horror movies have never been a must-see for me. It was highly unlikely I’d go to the movie theater to see one of them. A little more likely was catching them on cable.

It was in the early days of cable — at least in relation to its availability in my world — that I watched “Friday the 13th” at a friend’s house. The movie had all the tension and terrors one would expect, and I was too young for its “R” rating. I’m sure that provided some of the excitement as my friends and I gathered around the TV to see Jason, the supposed killer at a lakeside summer camp, wreak his havoc.

In the years since, I’ve seen my share, from “Carrie” to “Halloween,” “Poltergeist,” “The Shining” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

But in recent years — as one can tell from that list — my movie watching has been barren of the genre. As Halloween approaches and the annual promotion of horror flicks goes into overdrive, I’ve thought about why it doesn’t hold the attraction it once did.

I blame the kids.

My boys are 12 and 10 years old. Their horror movie-watching days are still ahead of them. About the scariest I’ve let them see so far was “Jaws,” which many wouldn’t classify as a horror film at all. Earlier this year, when the film was redistributed to theaters for a special 25th anniversary showing, the whole family went. We had a great time. Thankfully, it didn’t keep anyone out of the water weeks later when we took a trip to Florida’s Emerald Coast.

So why blame them? It seems, to me, it gets a lot harder to watch horror movies after becoming a parent. Raising these boys from their first moments on the earth has, in a strange way, made it less enjoyable for me to see anyone facing danger in a helpless situation. And it seems the horror genre has devoted a lot of time and scripts to putting people into situations in which the evil antagonist has all the control.

Films have long fascinated me. Telling stories through film can be done with amazing twists and turns, exceptional suspense and outstanding creativity. In the best horror films, I can appreciate the art of it. But while I can watch “The Godfather” over and over and over (and have), I can’t bring myself these days to watch a horror movie even once, much less twice.

It may also just be burnout. After all, how many horror films — from Bela Lugosi to Mia Wasikowska — have been made? How many ways can filmmakers try to scare us? How many times can we scream “don’t go in there” to the dim-witted secondary character who, against all good sense, opens the door to satisfy his curiosity about a creepy noise outside only to meet his demise. Deadbolts only work when they stay locked.

Perhaps age also permits reality to invade our psyche to the point imaginary horrors simply cannot keep up with the ones we see or read about in the news. When reality gives us evil people who don’t hesitate to decapitate a real person, videotape it and broadcast it to the world, going to a movie sometimes needs to be an exercise in escaping horror.

The march of time hasn’t completely extinguished my horror-watching ways. What could be more horrible than waking up to discover the world has been virtually destroyed by pedestrian zombies ready to bite into any human they can find? I can’t get enough of “The Walking Dead,” AMC’s series that follows an ever-changing band of survivors trying to figure out how to live and maintain some humanity in a world gone crazy. The masterful script writing and film making of the show, however, shows how it’s not the frightening thing attacking us that will necessarily lead to our doom. It’s often how we respond to our fear of that frightening thing that can reveal the real horrors.

That’s as true in real life as it is in the movies and TV shows.

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Greg Harton is editorial page editor for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Contact him by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWAGreg.

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