Can you really get used to horror films? A self-experiment
I had a new friend. Pretty cool guy. The only visible catch: Confessing horror movie fan. In fact, he loved everything I left out in the video library (yeah, there was that). Psycho thriller, splatter, all that crap? he could not be bloody, disgusting and scary enough. So far I have always assumed that such preferences have something to do with dodgy characters. But he was not dodgy, he said. He was quite a lot, but not really dodgy. Oh well. What would a dubious character say in his place?
The character is not
But scientists agree with him. Whether a person likes films that play with fear has more to do with life experience and media maturity. The fundamental difference between me and him is, according to experts, that he can distinguish reality and fiction and perceives the film as an aesthetic work of art, while I sit in the middle of the action and therefore fear for my life. Mh. Can you let it sit that way? Had I just been said to lack media maturity? My new friend thought it was worth trying to coach me for horror purposes. I rattled my teeth as a precaution, then I punched in.
Swedish horror movies are actually good
We started harmless. He put in the DVD with the enthusiasm of a missionary. "Swedish," he said, as if that had to tell me something. I had crawled into the far corner of the sofa and my fingers immediately clasped his arm as he came to me. That I can not remember the movie may be because I spent most of my time behind his back. What I saw, however, appalled me quite well. I understood what the scientists might have meant by "aesthetic artwork". Yes, even drops of blood in the snow in the faint light of a flickering street lamp are in some perfidious way aesthetic. And he had chosen well for the beginning. The Swedes are not too cruel. Bullerborn horror is doing quite well.
Then the classics
For a moment I thought about the Swedish movie, I could have done it. I did not have that. We watched "Final Destination", "I know what you did last summer" and "Halloween". I did it very bravely, but had to go to the restroom (to recover), to the kitchen (to hum my children's songs for reassurance), and to the fridge (to pour alcohol into me). Since I always looked quite relaxed with three per thousand at the credits, the gentleman was ripe for the final exam: Cinema.
Science can do me once
We watched "Drag me to hell". This is pretty much the most silly horror movie you can imagine. With some crazy old woman who comes to life half rotten again. Buhuuu. I realize that the thing was more like laughter than weeping, but without gin, toilets, and familiar surroundings, I was lost. I buried my fingernails so deeply in the back of my companion's arms that I'm glad I did not get charges for assault. Then we ran home through the park. The mad old lady always close on our heels. At night, I jumped up several times and covered every inch of skin with the blanket, as I had when I was five, when I was scared. "Some people just stay immature," sighed my friend. "I give up," I reluctantly agreed.
In "Twilight" it got him
We did not watch horror movies anymore. Probably we were scared right now: I for my life, at least for his upper arms. At some point we sat in the cinema again: in the back row, to smooch at Twilight. But we did not come to smooch. "If he keeps treating him that way, I'll ram him into his damned vampire heart," my companion hissed, his eyes wide. "That's just fiction," I said reassuringly, but he did not listen, he was in the thick of it in the movie. And I just thought: how immature!
