A Hard-Knock Life

Life is an agonizing challenge when you're a horror-film lover who won't watch anything rated worse than PG-13.

I have recently uncovered an excitement for supernatural horror. I used to hate it, to hate being scared. It's unpleasant; why would we seek it out? And truly, I don't know. I still don't enjoy being scared. I don't like the nausea of gore, or the scenes of bodily violence. I find the human body profoundly sacred, and destructive violence very profane. Plus most horror movies usually also have sex, which is its own kind of profane. I don't like brutishness, but horror with a sense of subtlety. . . that is extremely enticing.

I think I am seduced by the uncanny: Freud's uncanny, to be precise. I enjoy things which create dissonance with simultaneous familiarity and unfamiliarity. I like being shaken up, and being introduced to something unexpected. At the same time, I seem to be quite careful what kinds of images I put in my brain.

I want to go back to that idea of brutish vs. subtle. I think that might be the key. FIlms which require an R rating have indulged in something with a heavy hand. They have let the camera see too much. I think one of the most frightening films I ever saw was an independent short of an H.P. Lovecraft story in which the "evil" is never seen, like so many Lovecraftian tales; It is the thing in the darkness, or the darkness itself like Terry Pratchett's "Summoning Dark." It is more frightening UNSEEN, as M. Night Shyamalan proved in Signs. Because once you see it, you can name it. You can capture it in words.

I'm being inane. But you get the point. There's a fear from seeing a person's arm sawed off - a fear related to sympathetic agony - and an entirely different fear as the camera pans slowly up the white fingers, the hand, the wrist. . . and the arm's missing (as in A Haunting at Silver Falls). Few people, however, seem willing to risk (and it is a BIG risk) writing moments with subtlety that tip easily into camp or obscurity. It's easier to barge in and destroy everyone psychologically, physically, socially. Destruction is less risky, and it has the impact that many film theorists believe movies were created for - the spectacle.

If you have any recommendations for more subtle horror films, I welcome them.