Alysia says YES
Picture the scene:
Loud club music. Camera pan down onto two University students spilling out of Willow. We see a tall, brunette girl clutching a phone to her ear, attempting to talk to the Getaway Cars man whilst a large group of drunk Willow patrons are singing football chants at the top of their lungs. She hangs up and turns to the other student, her housemate. Camera close up.
Tall girl: [Shouting to be heard] It’s no use, I couldn’t hear him over the noise
Housemate: Ok, we need to find somewhere quieter to ring! Why don’t we duck down into this dark deserted alley then? With the suspicious looking skips that could harbour any number of psycho axe murderers and the pitch-black shadows that could be concealing all manner of demented supernatural beings?
Camera follows his pointing index finger to the mouth of a dark backstreet looming over the pair. The sound of the football chanting fades out as ominous music starts playing. Tendrils of mist drift sinisterly around their ankles, wrapping around their calves as their breath comes out in mist.
Camera switches to point of view of a sinister presence lurking further down the alley hidden in the shadows. Raspy, ragged breathing. Camera sharply ducks behind skip as tall girl switches on phone and the soft blue glow lights the damp brickwork of the backstreet’s walls.
I’m not going to carry on, because you all clearly know where this is going; these two are clearly about to be dismembered and eaten by whatever asthmatic lunatic is hiding down that dark alleyway. You’ve watched enough horror movies to understand that you don’t go gallivanting down backstreets late at night, you don’t go downstairs to investigate that ‘bump in the night’ and you NEVER go with your friends on holiday to a cabin in the woods.
This scene was the end of my evening last night (Ok I took artistic licence with the ‘tendrils of mist’… and the only ominous music playing was the sound of the Macarena wafting down from the Willow’s open window). But with over a decade’s experience watching Horror films under my belt, I knew the correct course of action was to avoid that alley like my life depended on it (which as the Scream movies have taught me, it probably did). So we did what anyone with an ounce of common sense would do: we fled to Subway and stood at the taxi rank, stomachs full, innards intact, throats un-slashed… you may not like horror movies, but they teach us valuable survival lessons.
And for those of you sitting there scoffing “this argument is flawed, horror movies are fiction – stop being a paranoid weirdo” well this I say to you: what about the rise of the ‘True Story’ horror flicks? Sure they’re a little exaggerated for the Hollywood box office, but at their core they are based in reality (If you don’t believe me check out this link http://horror.about.com/od/horrorthemelists/tp/20basedontruestory.htm). I’m not saying that the zombie apocalypse is going to batter down our doors tomorrow… but I am saying that it pays to be prepared. It’s all a matter of perspective: don’t look at them as ‘horror movies’, two hours of blood and gore written to empty your pockets and give you nightmares. See them for what they really are: handy little “How To” DVDs on staying alive when your best friend has chewed off your neighbours face, the government have sealed you inside your neighbourhood with a biohazard dome and you’re sat in your living room rocking back and forth screaming “Why oh WHY did I not grow a pair and climb out from behind the sofa to actually watch 28 Days Later??”
I know what I’d do, do you?
Cat says NO
There are a few things that confuse me in life; people’s snobbery when it comes to Strongbow, why Jedward and Will.i.am were allowed to carry the Olympic flame, and why people would spend good money to be scared witless, aka horror films.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried to warm to them. I’ve seen Halloween and The Omen, as well as being forced to sit through some of the Saws, which I pretty sure were less horror films and more blood baths. And recently I saw Cabin in The Woods, which I know a lot of you will be rolling your eyes at going ‘that’s not a real horror movie’, but dear God it was to me. I spent half of the film not knowing what to do, laugh at the jokes, or hide behind my jumper as some poor girl was decapitated by zombies.
Sure, you go to a horror film looking for the cheap thrills that come with people in masks jumping out from darkened rooms, but have you ever looked around at everyone else in the theatre? Well I have, mainly in an attempt to avoid looking at the screen, and this is what I have seen; people pulling their jumpers over their heads, people going to the loo for the tenth time in order to avoid the next horrific scene, people having their hands pulled away from covering their eyes by their ‘friends’, and large amounts of popcorn on the floor, which wasn’t there before the knife wielding maniac came on the screen.
And for those people that I’ve seen with a grin on their faces obviously enjoying the mental and physical torture of the characters on the screen, some who I admit aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed by going to ‘see what that spooky noise is’, I say SHAME! Shame that you are on the knife wielding maniac’s side, shame that you are enjoying yourselves, and SHAME that you lured your friend here by saying it was a thriller, not a horror.
So if you want to watch a horror film, fine, be crazy, watch it online or borrow one from a friend’s extensive collection. But don’t pay to be scared shitless. Not when you could experience real horror by sneaking into Willow’s kitchen, or discovering how McDonalds actually make their Chicken McNuggets.
There, that’s why I hate horror films. God it feels good to rant.