September Surrender: Day Twenty Three
My boyfriend and I like to watch horror films together. He likes the genre more than me, but I like being on the ride regardless. I watch movies to be told a good story. Let me in on something cool. Make me think. And if you can scare the bejesus out of me, that’s even better.
I want to entertain these darker thoughts that clue me into why we like Horror as a genre. I find it fascinating seeing where the human mind can go in to bring such shocking imagery to life. It’s put to film, documented for all time so the next generation can get a good scare. There remains a place for this kind of entertainment in the future. I’d love to one day find the medium to tell my own dark tale, one I know is in me, one I think I’d actually have fun writing. I’ve envisioned some edgelord who thinks he’ll get away with it. I one time said as much into a recording device given to me by my dad, who, along with my mom, was encouraging me to record my ideas to use at a future date. “I want to make mindf*ck movies,” I had said, referring to psychological thrillers in the realm of Requiem for a Dream. But this upset my father, who had at some point listened to my one and only recording, and called a meeting with my mother.
I didn’t have time to be upset that he listened to something I recorded for private use. He was angry about what I had said, telling me how upsetting it was to hear that this was the kind of thing I was interested in. I’m not sure he understood exactly what I had been going for, but whatever I ultimately said was beyond his comprehension. Maybe I came off creepy myself, as I can’t remember everything verbatim. But there came sense I was abandoning a project that never got off the ground, and eventually became too scary to ever complete.
I’m starting to think that maybe there’s another path for me if I ever want to get my own spooky story out there: reviews. Perhaps writing out a review or critique of a movie I haven’t seen can show me how it is writers structure their tales. I’m enough of a critic when the boyfriend and I watch some “so bad it’s good” flicks, where I act like I could do better or pretend I know how to write one. But I can heap praise on some of the better ones, too. As long as I give you my honest thoughts about these movies the more I watch them. I actually wrote a review for “Joker” here when it came out in 2019, though I added some social commentary as well. It’s not a bad idea to maybe try this again so I feel like I’m contributing in some way, not just to the movie-going public but to my own character arc as well.
Finding time to do it is the difficult thing. I’m living my own political thriller every time I go to work in the morning. But something keeps telling me that “when all this is over,” I’ll have every chance in the world to write out whatever’s been brewing since I was first introduced to the genre. I’d like to give you a review of one of the many my boyfriend has suggested to me. It’s just a matter of me doing it. To rev the chainsaw and slash through the laziness. It wouldn’t hurt to try. It certainly couldn’t kill me, either. Final Girl Fall is here.