Life Lessons from Scary Movies
The reason we subscribed to Netflix over two years ago was out of a desire for scary movies. I found some lists online about the best horror / thriller movies - and I made a list on paper of the ones that sounded promising. My wife and I don't like the really gore-filled movies that try to turn your stomach rather than send shivers down your spine. Creep-Out trumps Gross-Out, and spooky trumps shocks where we're concerned. I have no desire to watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I've probably seen The Sixth Sense four times.

We always like to glean an important lesson from these movies too, like: "Don't hide behind an open window," or "Don't look up at the ceiling with your mouth open."

Unfortunately, this year we've been extraordinarily busy, so we haven't been able to watch as many old movies as we have in the past. Bummer. However, it seems we've exhausted many of the best candidates in previous years, so we may have spared ourselves some trouble. But we have seen a few scary horror movies (or just scarily horrible movies) this October, and pulled a few important life lessons from them:

The Mist
Storyline: This plot from the original novella was cribbed by Valve for Half-Life, so you know the basic premise: botched military experiment opens up gateway to a hell dimension, and the world gets annexed by horrible monsters.
Critique: I mentioned this one in a previous blog post. The ending was too dark for me, but up until that point it was really great.
Lesson for Life: Try to avoid being trapped with a frightened fanatic during an apocalypse.

House
Storyline: Single writer stays in haunted house believing it holds the key to what happened to his young son who mysteriously vanished months earlier. Naturally what we'd all assume.
Critique: This one was better in my memory than revisiting it again 20 years later. It's sort of a horror-comedy which is most amusing due to bad acting (except for George Wendt as the nosy neighbor) and the protagonist's dogged refusal to be frightened away by the house's deadly attacks.
Lesson for Life: One more reason not to keep your shotgun loaded around the house: So that when the corpse-witch-monster gets to it first, she can only use it as a club.

The Howling
Storyline: Newswoman finds her remote country get-away disturbing to her nerves because of her werewolf neighbors party too loud.
Critique: I couldn't figure out if this one was supposed to be serious, or just a send-up of werewolf movies. It has the unfortunate hallmarks of too many horror movies of the era: It focuses on shocking special effects, gore, and nudity to "bring in the kids" to the box office. It was probably the basis for the RPG Werewolf: The Apocalypse.
Lesson for Life: According to my wife, it is that it's okay to kill your husband if he cheats on you, because he's probably been turned into a werewolf. According to me, it's ... uh... bring lots of silver bullets. LOTS.

Stir of Echoes
Storyline: Kevin Bacon (who is only a few degrees of separation from everybody in the world) plays an average Joe blue-collar guy who, in a moment of drunken misjudgment at a party, allows himself to be hypnotized by his sister-in-law. Said relative leaves him with a post-hypnotic suggestion that unleashes his latent clairvoyance. He then becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about the dead girl haunting his rented townhome.
Critique: The best of the movies we've seen this season. One of the best ghost story movies, period.
Lesson For Life: Your freaky new-age sister-in-law should never be permitted to hypnotize anyone.

Labels: Movies

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