...and still afraid of the dark.
I know this: while occasionally seduced by a good ad campaign, I almost never think it was a good idea after I see a horror movie. So I try to resist (yes, I'm The Person ads are aimed at; I see something shiny on the little box with the nice people in it, & I think, God, yes, I never knew it, but I do need Spray-on Hair), I do. I haven't seen a horror movie since a friend rented The Ring, and I didn't sleep properly for over a week.
But there was this commercial on last night (oh, those gorgeous people in the little box, they are so convincing), for this new horror movie, something terribly stylish and gothic, all shot in deep sensual shades of gray, a beautiful heroine so poignantly suffering, things half-seen, temptingly, and I'm sucked in, I'm there, I'm thinking, yeah, yeah, let's go see that movie - never mind I haven't been to a movie in months and months, never mind that I don't know how to un-suspend my disbelief, that horror movies get under my skin, that there are images seen when I was nine burned onto my brainscreen that still freak me out, no, let's go to that one, yes, as soon as possible - and then, just at the tail end of the ad, a couple walking down the street with an umbrella, they look toward the camera, and then, and then, their faces melt, jaws and eyes gaping hideously open.
Aaaaaaah! Aaaaaaah! What is this doing on my television!? No no no no no, it was just an ad, for Chrissakes, you can't be putting images like that into my head with an ad!
Last night, getting up to go to the bathroom (a depressingly frequent exercise), brain in that soft, half-sleeping state...and that image, that stupid image, seeps into my head, gaping mouth, goggle eyes. I'm awake all the way, now, and talking myself down, think about something good, something pleasant, think about work, think about kittens, think about anything, but now I'm rushing through the hand-washing, now running flat-out back to bed, now climbing in next to Mr. Billy, shaking.
Why is this getting to me (and tonight I made Mr. Billy - a Media Professional - pull apart the image and explain to me how he think they did it, and Really, he says, It was kinda cheesy and cheaply done), why this one stupid, fucking, studio-created image, when there are real-life, real world horrors happening in my own country?
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6 comments:
Mr. Billy - a Media Professional
Uh-oh.
Horror movies give me the willies, but I love it. And I alway sleep better after seeing one (well, I did with the first one I saw, Alien, when I was 11). There is something terribly wrong with me.
you should probably avoid the entire corpus of Japanese horror films, then. I was going to suggest someday that the monkeys curl up and watch Pulse, but now I think that's probably a bad idea...
I can't watch horror movies either. I did find something that helps me get through them without suffering the paranoid, heeby-jeeby aftermath. Get the movie on video. When you get to a part that will be scary (good to have someone with you who has already seen the movie), fast forward play through it. It is really hard to be scared of something that going 60 miles an hour. It actually makes it a little funny. You still get to see the whole movie, but you won't be so traumatized.
Usually, I am too tired during those middle of the night bathroom runs to notice anything. But, there are times when I realize how creaky my house is, and wonder if the ghost of some angry Native American warrior is going to mistake me for John Smith and mess with me...
Anne - you said it, not me.
monkey - yes, yes, let's rent Pulse! (you see how I am?) Okay, let's rent Pulse, watch it in the middle of the day, & follow it up with, oh, an Audrey Hepburn flick. Deal?
Syl - good idea, but different things freak out different people, & it's hard to predict. Case in point:
Anna - Blair Witch didn't do a thing for/to me, in that way. But I still get cold sweats from an image in the old T.V. movie Sybil. Go figure.
JK - those are my ancestors, and yes, they are going to mess with you.
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