"They'll all laugh at you."

I'm writing this while watching "The Exorcist" alone in my basement, with all the lights on. I have to do this because honestly, I'm just too scared to give my full attention to the movie. Here's the thing: I love horror films. Apparently. Who knew? Until recently, I'd always thought I hated them. But really, I've just always been bad at them. I get way too scared way too easily. I can't sleep, sometimes for days; my neck gets tired of whipping around to look behind me every five minutes; I can't look in a mirror without my heart racing. It's just never been worth it. But now, suddenly, I've decided that it is.

A month ago I watched "Silence of the Lambs", and that was the movie that started all this. All my anxieties and overwhelming fears were still there - I still was scared to turn the lights off afterward, and I still checked to make sure all the windows were locked before I went to bed - but I realized for the first time

Okay, wait, sorry, I have to interrupt myself for a minute. I stopped in the middle of that sentence when I realized that I really wasn't paying any attention at all to the movie and I probably should. So I just shut my computer and watched for a while. And now, twenty minutes later, I'm back up in my room, shaking. I just looked and saw that the lights in the room next to where I was sitting were flickering a little bit. I completely freaked out, shut off the TV, grabbed my knitting and laptop and ran upstairs to my room. This was just a perfect example of how I cannot handle scary movies in the very least. Seriously, I couldn't even finish the fucking movie, and now I'm convinced Reagan is hiding under my bed with Mischa Barton or something. My heart is still racing. But -

but I realized for the first time that I love that feeling of my heart racing. I really do. I don't know why, obviously it just means that I'm terrified out of my mind, but there is also that tinge of exhilaration that comes along with it. And what I'm discovering right now is that sometimes, that tinge alone is worth it. Sometimes that's what you need to get out of your safe zone. Sometimes it's good to pause every time you hear a random creak in your house; it's good that your heart starts thumping harder when the wind blows a door open. Sometimes it's good to run into the bathroom and brush your teeth as quickly as you can without ever looking into the mirror before sprinting back to your room and leaping into bed so you don't come within a foot of what could be underneath.
Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.

Of course, there are different kinds of horror movies. Bloody ones, zombie ones, mindfuck ones, etc etc. The big thing here is suspense vs. surprise. There's that whole Hitchcock bomb-under-a-dinner-table thing that I can't seem to find the exact quotation of online, but I'm pretty sure my film professor didn't make it up - surprise is when you see two people talking at a dinner table and all of a sudden it explodes; suspense is when you first see someone put a bomb under the table, and then you have to watch the (unknowing) people talking while you wait for it to explode. Or something like that. Both of these elements are necessary for a successful horror film. Surprise and suspense have to work with each other and complement each other to make sure that the viewer is alternating between sitting on the edge of their seat and jumping out of it. We have to have that feeling of anticipation while we're waiting, knowing that something is going to happen...and we still have to not be ready when it does.
Admittedly mainly for the purposes of putting off sleep for a while longer, I'm going to use three examples to demonstrate the different ideas/effects of suspense vs. surprise.

1. SURPRISE

"Carrie"
Holy shit. I just saw this for the first time two nights ago. "Carrie" isn't very suspenseful at all, really - you know something bad is happening pretty much constantly throughout the movie. The bucket of blood is obviously a prop designed to further suspense, since we know about it while Carrie doesn't, but unfortunately the aging of this film has in a way ruined that. The story is a big enough part of pop culture that everyone knows what will happen with the bucket of blood, and we know that Carrie's going to freak out about it. What we don't know is exactly when it's going to happen and exactly what she's going to do about it and jesus christ she's telekinetic, how are you supposed to predict what she'll do? And the mirror and the knives and the hand and oh god oh god oh god the hand. Talk about surprise. That's certainly a way to end a movie.

2. SUSPENSE

"Rosemary's Baby"
To be honest, I haven't seen this one as recently as I've seen the others. But from what I remember, this film exemplifies "suspense" for me. The music, and the colors, and the tension...I spend the entire film gnawing on my nails and jiggling my feet, preemptively grabbing the cushions because I'm sure that SOMETHING is going to happen. But it never does, at least not until the very end. As a whole, the movie is exceptionally uneventful. But in the best way possible. As boring as it maybe should be, the imagined suspense keeps me waiting and engaged and pretty fucking scared for no real reason at all. I convince myself that something's going to happen, and I spend the entire movie waiting for it.

3. BOTH

"The Exorcist"
Okay, so, like I said, I haven't exactly finished this one yet. It's paused downstairs in my DVD player in the room next to the room with the flickering lights. So, granted, this is only from what I've seen of the movie - but to be fair, I made it through most of it. Anyway, "The Exorcist" uses both suspense and surprise together to make sure that you are as terrified as you can possibly be. We are easily lulled into the illusion that we know what's coming. Since Reagan is confined to her room for the entirety of the movie, we know that the scary parts can really only happen there, with her - so we are able to be on our guard when we enter the bedroom, and relax when we leave the house. But the film still manages to throw enough surprises at us. The nature of Reagan's demon is that we never know what's coming, and each violent act is more horrifying and shocking than the last, continually surprising us even though we've been waiting for something to happen.

Dudes, I took a sleeping pill before I started writing this because I knew I'd have trouble getting to bed tonight (yes, I AM that pathetic), and I feel it starting to kick in. Things are starting to get blurry, and that means it's time to stop blogging for the night. Oh. Hm. I just now realized that spending the hour before I go to sleep writing about really scary stuff might not have been the best use of my time...

xoxo,
ttttttues