Here's why you should give horror a chance.
 | By Adrian J. Rivera Editing Fellow, Opinion |
Do you like scary movies? What's your favorite scary movie? |
Those are the lines that Ghostface, the killer in the horror franchise "Scream," asks an unsuspecting teen in the opening scene. |
If you answered "no" and "none" to those first two questions, and if you've never seen "Scream" and have no desire to, I implore you to reconsider. |
Why turn to horror when there's already so much to be scared about? In a guest essay today, the horror novelist Stephen Graham Jones argues that it's precisely because there is so much to be scared about in our world today that you should give horror a chance. |
"Horror is a fun house mirror everybody can use," writes Jones. "It exaggerates, distorts and distills whatever it is we're trying to work through, then delivers it back to us as entertainment." |
If our ability to handle fear and anxiety is like a muscle, then scary movies, books and TV shows can give you a good workout. And it's a low stakes commitment, too. You can always turn off the movie, close the book, change the channel. The same can't be said when we're confronted with the horrors of the real world. |
And, as Graham Jones points out, even if a scary movie doesn't have a happy ending — Ari Aster's "Hereditary" comes to mind — it has an ending. After two hours or two seasons, after 200 pages, we're afforded closure. |
When will the pandemic end? When will the country's extreme political divisions be mended? When will the climate crisis be averted? We don't yet know the answers to these questions, and perhaps, the answers are too scary for us to consider seriously. |
If you're horror averse, I get it. I used to run through the living room with my hands over my eyes when my parents had a scary movie on. But I'm a horror convert, and while I initially envisioned this article as an opportunity to help usher in "spooky szn," I now see it as an effort at converting nonbelievers. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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