Why Scary Movies: Stories of Hope, Survival and Female Badassery
When people find out how much I love horror films, or that the majority of the movies I watch are scary—I get some serious judge-y face. “But you seem SO normal?!” “Or how do you watch that crap?”, I have even had someone say to me “What’s wrong with you?”. There is even more concern when they [judgers] find out that I watch them by myself. A similar line of questioning occurs and suddenly I find myself searching for a defense that I’m not some creep that gets off on psychos cutting up people.
I love film. I’m a horror buff, yes, but I love film in general, and theatre, and concerts, and reading…essentially any medium that transports its viewer is a gift to me. The term is “the suspension of disbelief” I can go into the origins of this, but then that would make this blog have more of an academic focus wouldn’t it? However, the suspension of disbelief is in fact a real phenomena and generates billions of dollars every year. People pay to go to a dark room, watch a big screen with other people—it sounds crazy, right? Well the majority of us do this. We pay to go see the newest rom/com, dramedy, or in my case: horror flick. So why do I pay money to go to the movie that is going to give me a heart attack? The answer wasn’t obvious to me at first, but then I got to thinking about my favorite scary movies.
A few of my favorites:
Wes Craven’s (duh)
John Carpenter’s (classics)
Jonathon Demme’s (so scary)
The common thread between these movies (and most of the horror genre) is survival, and where there is survival—there is hope and the rise of a bad ass. These three movies, for example, have powerful female characters, a.k.a. the Final Girl. These women are faced with hellish situations forcing them to find their inner strength, stand up and not only save themselves but others as well. And in a society where women are typically characterized as needing saved, these Bad Bitches are the ones who survive and conquer the monstrous antagonists: Sidney kills her movie-obsessed boyfriend, Billy and friend Stu, Lori escapes her murderous brother, Michael, and Clarisse outsmarts the man-eating, Hannibal and captures the Skin-Happy, Buffalo Bill. What horror gives its viewers is terrifying, yes, but ultimately provides narratives that empower women characters as we watch them rise above literal evil and prevail. So yeah…I watch a lot of scary movies—shouldn’t you, too?
