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HOW WIMPS SHOULD WATCH HORROR MOVIES
T H U R S D A Y , M A R C H 2 8 , 2 0 1 9 | 25 R0011682545
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April 13 7:30 pm
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ELAHE IZADI 97/16 wire service
My anxiety began eight days before the advanced screening of Us, Jordan Peele’s latest horror movie. Willingly sitting in a dark movie theatre so that horrifying surprises can mentally and emotionally terrorize me? Not my idea of a relaxing time! While it’s very cool that I get to watch movies as part of my job, when that involves watching scary ones - well, I think I deserve some hazard pay, is what I’m saying. Avoiding the horror genre has become increasingly difficult for anyone into movies and pop culture. In recent years, several films classified as horror have topped critics’ lists and won Oscars, sparking talk of it as the new prestige genre. The films have inspired ubiquitous memes, turned into think-piece fodder and received the Saturday Night Live treatment. Between Get Out, A Quiet Place, Hereditary, Bird Box and the forthcoming Midsommar, Ma and now Us, horror has once again gone mainstream. “As a horror fan and creator, all of us are singing in the streets,” says author and university lecturer Tananarive Due. Meanwhile, us wusses are cowering under our sheets. “Why am I creating more anxiety when I have enough just getting in my car and driving to work?” wonders Aisha DeBerry, 39. “And then to pay for that? It doesn’t make sense.” Amen. Have you even looked at Twitter today? (It doesn’t matter which day you’re reading this.) “The world is kind of a trash fire,” says Kelsey Cooper, 26, a John Krasinski and Emily Blunt fan who can’t bring herself to watch A Quiet Place. “I personally struggle a lot with anxiety,” she says. “My brain is constantly telling me to be scared, so seeing a movie where people are dying in horrible ways? My brain is already doing that to me.” “There’s plenty of scary things in the world,” says Lev Rickards, 37. “Black people get shot by the cops, climate change - why deliberately go out and seek it?” People have sought out these thrills for decades, and the genre has had a star turn before, with celebrated films such as 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby and 1980’s The Shining. But this time around, the intensity and rapidity of the discussion has been amplified because of the internet, says James Kendrick, a Baylor University professor who teaches a class on horror. The conversation also includes how to classify these movies. When Get Out earned Golden Globe nominations under the comedy category, Peele subversively declared that the movie was actually a documentary. “Us is a horror movie,” Peele tweeted Sunday, a message that star Lupita Nyong’o reiterated. “There’s become an effort to redefine horror films that are actually critically acclaimed,” Kendrick says. “(As though) if they’re that good or well-made or thematically prescient they can’t be horror,
97/16 news service photo
Evan Alex, Lupita Nyong’o and Shahadi Wright Joseph in a scene from Jordan Peele’s new horror movie, Us. But some of us are roller coaster ity and nature of the horror within a they must be something else.” people, and some of us (myself includparticular film without giving anything Horror is more than gore and slasher ed) are not. away. films, says Due, who executive-proAnd it’s great that filmmakers are The setting is key, too. Some insist duced the documentary Horror Noire excited about their craft and igniting that the movie theatre, far from home and teaches a course on “the Sunken deeper cultural conversations through and among a crowd, feels like the best Place” (from Get Out) at the University horror movies. But it can be a little frusplace to watch a movie. Others say your of California at Los Angeles. “This is a living room, where you can walk out or genre that can really help us as a society trating for us wimps. “People are saying really interesting and important things - hit pause or blast the lights, is the ideal confront anxieties, fears, transitions, maybe making important social comsetting for cowards. obstacles.” mentary - that’s hard to watch because Due has her own tips: Constantly tell Due loved horror as a child, when I’m a wuss,” Rickards says. yourself, “It’s only a movie,” employ watching it was a fun way to be scared Many self-described scaredy-cats the “tried-and-true trick of covering within a safe context; with age, it will face their fears, particularly with your eyes at key moments” and binge became a therapeutic method to deal Peele’s films, because of the critical buzz on scary, real-life news on the day of with heavier anxieties. It’s a lesson she and the cultural importance of a black viewing. gleaned from her mother, the late civil filmmaker creating horror movies starI gave it a go: Driving to see Us, I rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, ring black people and tackling weighty listened to NPR stories about Venezuwho was a horror fan; the genre served elan sanctions and economists’ efforts issues. as an outlet for the racial trauma she to place a statistical value on a human “I have this conflict because I want endured. life. During the movie’s many frights, to support Jordan, but I’m completely “Headlines scare me. True crime stoI looked away, covered my face with a scared of this genre,” says DeBerry, ries scare me... Real, human monstrosscarf as needed and burrowed my face ity is not fun for me to watch,” Due says. who has been nervous about Us for into my co-worker’s shoulder (sorry!). “When those people are supernatural or three months but plans to go on opening night with her girlfriends anyway. Two hours later, my nerves slowly when there’s a fantasy element, when “Even though I don’t know the industry settled as I got back into my car. I didn’t there’s a monster, now I’m ready to well, I want to send the message that we have to warn anyone about the creepy watch because the monster in a horappreciate you, and that you’re breaking doppelgangers and scissor-wielding ror movie can be a stand-in for real-life barriers and blazing a trail in your own weirdos in Us because there were none monstrosity that lets me engage with it right.” around. This is real life and that was just from a distance, but also leech out that Plus, “so many of my friends are a movie. trauma and expel it in a way that can talking about it, and because we’re all I turned the car back on and the radio feel fun.” followers of him, I feel like I’m going to played headlines about a cyclone’s Fun, you know, like how a roller be left out if I don’t see it.” death toll and an obscenely expensive coaster is supposed to be fun. “You’re That’s one way to get through it. sports deal. putting yourself in a situation where Another popular strategy among those The feeling of dread I had while your mind and body feels it is in conwith delicate constitutions: reading the watching Us returned, but now it was stant danger,” Kendrick says. “You’re out of control and you’re at the mercy of entire plot on Wikipedia before stepping about the world — the actual one where this machine that you strapped yourself foot into a theatre. Some of us don’t I have to live. Are we those blinkered into... For those who like it, it’s the relief want any spoilers, though —º Hopper dummies, who don’t see the monsters at the end that you got through it.” wants a website that warns of the severuntil it’s too late?