Is it weird that I never get scared...
 

Call me crazy, but I've seen all the essentials - Exorcist, Jaws, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, etc, etc.... and for some reason, no matter if I'm by myself, or in the theater, or with a friend, or with the lights off... I don't get scared. Is this weird?

Maybe it's a silly topic, but the thing that interests me the most is that horror is my favorite movie genre, yet it doesn't really affect me. So far, in my twenty years of life, the scariest movies I've honestly seen, that have gotten a smidgen of a reaction from me are:

1. The Hills Have Eyes (2006) - I wasn't scared, but mildly disturbed.
2. Halloween (2007) - A few jumps here and there, but nothing that lasted more than a second.
3. The Grudge - Once again, slightly disturbed.

And that's it. I've NEVER been genuinely scared by a movie before. I've seen a butt load of horror films, but I've never been REALLY scared. Nightmare on Elm Street doesn't scare me at all.... neither does Jaws... nor Exorcist... nothing. It's like I don't have that function in my brain.


So basically, I have two questions for everyone.

1. Is anyone else like this?

2. Are there any movies out there that are unquestionably scary, that would even scare the living crap out of someone like me?

I know it sounds odd, but I want to be scared... and it hasn't really happened. :(

Thanks a lot guys!

Weird??

That depends.. How old were u when u started watching horror and how old are u now?


I don't get scared either anymore, but i can still find certain scenes creepy and that's one of the best feelings in the world. :)

Hello there! Well, I'm 20... and I started watching horror when I was like 5, lol.

The Exorcist spooked me out a bit, and there's the occasional cheap jump scene I react to. Other than that, I've never really felt scared watching a movie.

See, that's what I mean! Like... cheap shots would make anyone jump, you know? I'm talking about non-cheap, genuinely frightening shit. It seems like there's nothing out there.

I remember when the first SAW came out, and how everyone kept saying it was the most disturbing and scary movie ever... and how the ending was unforgettable... and when I finally saw it, I was like, "That's it??"

I just find it weird that I'm a die hard Horror fan, yet I've never been scared. It's like I'm craving for something to come along and make me say "This is the scariest movie I've ever seen"... but that's never happened for me. There isn't a single movie that makes me nod and say, "Yep, this is the scariest."

There's plenty of movies that I love, though, that I don't find scary, like:

The Descent
High Tension
Dawn of the Dead
The Hills Have Eyes

... but I like them for entertainment purposes, not because they scare me (they don't).

Yes, then you're weird as hell, FREAK!!!!

I'll still recommend you give Salems Lot (the one from 1979) a try, even tho i think it's too late for you to get scared over a movie. You're simply too old. :(

The Exorcist scares me. Apart from that I'm generally not disturbed by a movie unless it uses a sudden "shock" tactic.

maybe you are not watching them in the right enviroment. Did they use to scare you when you where 5?

Try watchinging somethin on a windy night with the dor open and the blinds half up.

Oh yes, it does depend entirely on viewing context. Nothing beats a dark room, alone, right near the TV.

Plus, it's interesting to look at whether films are scarier the first time you see them or on repeat viewings. Sometimes it's the anticipation of what's going to happen when you watch a film for the second, third, fourth time etc.

An example of this effect, for me, is that brilliant moment in Exorcist III when the killer emerges from the room in pursuit of the poor Nurse. Waiting for that moment is terrifying. I can't actually remember if I was more or less scared the first time I saw it.

As I child I was terrified of "The Fly" (it's now my favourite film) and part of that fear came from the fact that I had seen the film already and I knew what was coming. I knew that each time we see the character he looks more horrifying. But then, once he was onscreen for a few seconds I wasn't as afraid anymore.

Of course, this can have the opposite effect. The shock value at the end of "Don't Look Now" was entirely ruined for me because I had already heard what happened. I was anticipating it, but it didn't scare me.

It's a shame because my girlfriend is terrified of horror films in any way, shape or form. And that's not even in an "ooh tell me when the monster is gone" kind of way. She will not watch horror films. The other night I was getting ready to watch "Final Destination 2" when I went downstairs to get a drink. She had to mute the TV because she couldn't bear to hear the sound effects on the menu!

Interesting subject, the more I think about it.

My girlfriend is definitely the same way... and I'm soooo jealous of her!! I wish I could be as scared as her... but it just doesn't happen.

Tonight, this is what I'm doing:

Amityville Horror (2005)
Lights off
Alone
Face up to the screen
Volume up


Any other suggestions?

Same here, I am more creeped out by horror movies than scared, thats what I watch them for.

The concept behind movies such as "1984" or "V For Vendetta", the concept of totalitarianism/socialism scares the hellout of me. Sure, I can gun down a monster or a zombie or a pyscho with a machete, but a whole government that controls and monitor's everything you do, controls everything down to your thoughts and ideas, deeply frightens me on an intellectual level.

Same here. However, I think her girl movies are a hell of a lot harder to watch than any horror flick. Seriously, it's scary to think that some women find them realistic or entertaining.

Time to get yourself a new girlfriend

lol

Amen!!

:p

Most girls are like this. Those that aren't already have girlfriends...joking...sort of.....

Instead, make it:

The Notebook
Sex and the City: The Whole 4th Season
Don't miss Grey's Anatomy on Thursdays!
Read her some articles from Cosmopolitan while cuddling
Must Love Dogs


Then you two might have a "good night" ;)

I think this is pretty common for nearly everyone on this forum. After a certain age, or a certain quantity of horror films, you simply become... immune to them. I think most of us watch horror not exactly to be frightened (although we all secretly wish we could feel that again.) but for numerous other reasons.

I remember being frightened by just about anything when I was little. I walked in on one of the Leprechaun sequels my parents were watching when I was 5, and had nightmares involving Leprechauns for a good two years (no exaggeration...) afterward. I'd get a sick thrill out of stealing my Uncle's VHS tapes and watching People Under the Stairs, IT, House, and so on. I also had an immense fear for two of Shredder's henchman in one of the Ninja Turtles movies.

What 'scares' me today is not so much your typical horror, but rather true crime. Stuff that really happened, and is still happening, more frequently then you'd like to think. The thought that at any time someone could be watching you also freaks me out. I've had nightmares, as if my vision was a security camera, watching an intruder watch me sleep. Circling the room. That stuff freaks me out.

When I leave me room for a late night snack or to use the bathroom, I run past three open rooms which are pitch-black. I never look in, but always imagine someone there, someone about to reach out and touch my shoulder. I also admit to having to check around my room, and yes, I do check the closet.

Maybe this fear came from having an intruder once... although I never actually saw him. Nothing was stolen. We came in the house one night from doing groceries and everything seemed fine. Went back to the car to lug more stuff in, and noticed a difference. In between trip 1 and trip 2 the patio door had been opened, and the dogs from the neighbors behind and to the left of us went into a barking rage. The large window in the back room (which we were using for storage purposes at the time) had the screen ripped out of it. We assumed it was an intruder, but we never really knew.

Media-wise, almost anything that is filmed realistically frightens me. The Blair Witch Project, for example. The Poughkepsie Tapes and REC look like potential frighteners as well. Silent Hill, the video game franchise, also frightens me.

I'm exactly the same! i started watching horror when i was 8 ish and im in my late teens now. I am also desperate to be scared! So, ive set out to write some stuff. ive been asking around a bit for some suggestions as to what scares them, but, with no response, i cant really write a script that will scare the bejesus out of you all.

i know im young and from england and everything. but whatever. i have talent, why not use it to write something that we can all enjoy?

Suggestions Please :D

Much Luv - New Kid On The Block

I think you'll find yourself hard pressed to scare people unless there's some sort of actual physical interaction with the viewer... at least with a horror film. Make some movie about the environment or the political state of a country if you want to really make people squirm. Disturbing people is easier, you should give that a go.

I've given my original post a lot of thought since I wrote it, and I feel like I have some more insight and thoughts.

See, I'm a writer who's OBSESSED with finding something truly scary, and I can't. It seems like there's nothing in the world that would scare adults anymore. Really scaring an adult would be like... losing your job... finding out you have cancer... not being able to pay your credit card debts. You can't really make a horror MOVIE out of these things, lol.

The closest I can think of (as far as scaring adults) is "The Exorcist", a movie that made my grandfather so terrified, he had to walk out of the theater... and could barely sleep for a month. He was in his THIRTIES when it came out!!

The problem is, since that came out in the late 70's... thirty years ago... the Horror genre has evolved into gross-out nonsense. It's all about blood, gore, beheadings, and quite honestly, horror isn't really HORROR anymore, it's just sick in-your-face stuff. You usually have your standard group of teens who get killed off one by one by some serial killer, and the appearance of the killer varies (hockey mask, red and green sweater, a doll that comes to life, guy with a chainsaw)... and it's usually just an hour and a half of screaming girls running in the woods, running in the house, running to their car, etc.

I don't think scary movies focus on being scary anymore... they focus on "how much can we gross out an audience?" --- See Hostel, which is closer to PORN than horror, in my honest opinion. Instead of it being sex-porn, it's gore-porn... people must apparently get off on that (since the success spawned a sequel).

It also seems like the bridge between Horror, Action, and Comedy has been crossed, so we have movies like:

Shaun of the Dead
Hatchet
Cabin Fever
Dawn on the Dead (remake)
Seed of Chucky
Severance
Resident Evil
28 Days/Weeks Later

... where scary movies aren't really just-plain-scary anymore, but some are actually funny at times, or some have action shoot-outs, car chases, and explosions. This really takes away a realistic element, where you're too busy laughing, or too busy being impressed by the car flipping over.

That's not what horror was supposed to be, in my opinion.

So, I think in order to have a movie scare the living shit out of people our age, some director has to start from Square One, really investigate the nature of horror, and ignore all films that have come out recently. I think you have to remove blood, guts, sex, boobs, car chases, and teens smoking weed.... and you have to really look at horror from a realistic standpoint.

What scares us? What's something truly horrific?

In my opinion, you could touch subjects that are not exactly PC:

- School shootings
- Being kidnapped
- Terrorism
- Rape
- Child abuse
- Getting lost

These aren't really subjects that we talk about. We always "stay away" from this stuff. Why? If the message of horror is that "Don't do these things or the Boogeyman will get you!!"... How can that affect us on a deep level if the "big, bad, boogeyman" is Freddy Krueger, a character who's been reduced to action figures, dolls, comic books, and cartoons??? THAT'S NOT SCARY!

I mean, although these films didn't "scare" me, I thought the subject matter was unique and on the right track:

Open Water
Bug
Se7en
The Mothman Prophecies

I mean, these films actually challenged you to THINK, and it wasn't all about tits and guts.

In closing (lol), I'm eagerly awaiting a movie to go outside the box and really tackle a concept that scares the shit out of our age-group. I don't know what it will be... but I feel like we DESPERATELY need an "Exorcist" for this generation. I haven't seen anything close to it yet. Maybe someday it will come.

Yeah I'm 20 and I've been watching them since I was about 3-4. I rememeber watching Freddy and I had my hands over my eyes but I was peeking through and Freddy was talking and moving closer that scared me. I'd sleep with my parents but that didn't keep me from watchuing them...I bet my parents were kinda pissed that they let me.

The things that creep me out are things that float toward you. Like I didn't like the grudge but when the girl started coming up the stairwell and the lights were flickering. When it is a gradual kind of thing. John Carpenter's vampires when the head vampire is catching up to the car..that kinda stuff.

I love movies but playing horror related games are scary because even though its a game your guy can still die. Maybe if an entire movie(which prolly wouldnt be that great...AKA Blair which) was in first person maybe its like your experiening it. Where movies you are watching other people. First person video games are scary because its like thats you as compared to watching the other people.

But besides that I love horror just because I love looking at the feel and the way the antagonists look,and the music and sounds more than being scared.

Can't we keep a little boob.....maybe just a side shot?


Most of us have been watching horror since we were wee ones.....so yeah, we pretty much have seen it all.I find the nightly news much more frightening than anything on celluloid.

You know I was just thinking about that today. Poor little baby grace,that marine that was allegedly raped and then burned with the baby. I remember hearing about some assholes that broke into this house and stole these people's stuff and they had two little dogs and they stomped on and twisted one and i think the other survived sick fuckers. I turned on the news and the first thing that came out of the anchors mouth was about a plane crashing into lake eerie. Nothing but gloom

I tend to think that truth is more terrifying than fantasy.

Of course..I mean you never know if there really are cenobites out there but there are freaks that would love to inflict pain to you. All the people that don't hav ADT home securtity including me. You just never know. Did you ever see the news were some guy was walking down the street and some guy came up and hit him in the back of the head with a baseball bat for no reason(or maybe he was getting iniated into a gang)and the man died, it's scary. Poor animals and children getting abused and neglected its bullshit and its always happening and theres not much I can do about it. Whats worse is there are people out there that could care less about what happens to these people and these animals.

It sounds like what you seem to find terrifying is what most exploitation films are made of. But you do have to take into account, you are searching for a horror film that will scare the pants off of you. That's not going to happen. You are old enough to realize, it's just a movie, and if it does wind up being too much for you, you can click a button and make it stop.

I don't think it's humanly possible for someone to create an experience such as near death, to be shown on a movie screen, and it still bother you. Boogeymen are the only things that are still somewhat, scary to most. And I guess they figure too, if you want something real, you can watch the evening news.

Vacancy, was technically a realistic scenerio. There are sick people out there, and I don't doubt that, that sort of thing happens. But because it is a movie, it's not going to have the same impact on you, as say, being there yourself.

Though many movies may not be realistic, they can still be somewhat effective. Take for instance, Dead Birds. I was watching this really late one night, and I could barely stay awake. But the way this movies suspense and minimal amount of horror actually played into it, it scared me. I didn't really want to go to sleep when I turned it off. I couldn't get some of those images out of my head.

Yes, movies such as Hostel, that the main focal point, is sex and gratious nudity, are not really horror in my opinion. They fall behind in the fact that they aren't scary with all of the naked women running around. Realistic? Maybe. Scary? Deffinitely not. But they found something that they are able to cash in on, and they are going for it.

As far as having another movie with the impact that The Exorcist had, it's not going to happen. At that time, people didn't know what to think. That wasn't a part of a normal film. No horror film prior to that had been quite that controversial in that field of play. Now days, we have come to expect it. All the general horror audience wants is more of the regular stuff. Mostly gore and nudity.

I think in the horror movie world, the only way to shock people now, would be to actually kill people on screen. Not in a special effects way, but in real life, they actually die. And I'm not talking about executions on tape.

I hope they don't ever take it that far, but some idiot is going to get the idea and go for it.

I wasn't a big fan of Hostel but when that dude used that blow torch GOT DAMN

Wow i never really thought about it like that. I mean the only flick that ever scared me was Dawn Of The Dead which i watched quite recently. I know that its fantasy but these zombie freaks look like they will just jump out of the screen and get you.

Im maybe sounding a bit pathetic but after watching it a few times, i half expect to wake up and find the world is full of biting zombies and something is going to break into my house and eat me, lol.

But yeah, ive taken a few ideas that will freak people out and leave them with memories of the film. What ive learned from talking to people about this is that what they fear through their childhood generally stays with them into later life. So, i went and took the basics and wrote a few ideas down. The feedback that i got was normally "Oh my gosh! what would you do if that really happened?"

So you take something that we all think about, even you adults...i think lol e.g.
Something behind the shower curtain
something under the bed
things getting into the bed covers with you
seeing your automatic outside light suddenly come on, so your obviously going to investigate. you reach the front door and...WHAM... some ugly shit is banging on your door.


Really, what would you do in this situation?

I think that the whole REAL HORROR thing is something like this. Making your audience feel that if they get scared and pull the covers over their head that something is going to be waiting for them underneath. What do ya think? :)

Yes, I believe that these movies are aptly being pinned as torture-porn now. Here's an article on America's new obsession, if you're interested.

Well, in defense of the industry, there's movies like:

Elephant (school shooting)
Captivity, Borderland (getting kidnapped)
The Hills Have Eyes, Devil's Rejects (rape, abuse)
The Blair Witch Project, Penny Dreadful (getting lost)

So they're there... You just have to look sometimes... The only problem with this territory is that, if handled incorrectly, it can definitely result in just more torture-porn. Directors like Rob Zombie definitely take a page from TCM and are more interested in exploitation than scare.


Ahhh. So you're looking for more "DISTURBING"... Not necessarily "SCARY."

I'm having an issue here with verbiage...

I think that there's a difference between "scared" (which tends to be more immediate yet temporary) and "disturbing" (which sticks with you after the horror movie ends).

Examples of movies that scared me recently (2000 - present, which would make me the ages of 18 - 25).

• Halloween (I had to leave the room we were watching it in because I literally thought I would wet myself)
• The Grudge (I was living alone at the time and stayed up all night until 4 in the morning)
• Crazy Eights
• The Blair Witch Project (I was home alone and had to go to a friend's house to sleep over)
• Event Horizon
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

These movies which HORRIFIED me when I saw them. As in I jumped, I clutched, I hid while watching. These movies generally focus more on suspense to draw emotion from you, but it's brief and not necessarily resonating. Afterwards, I am left with a feeling of utmost respect for a director that could actually pull that feeling out of me.


Examples of movies that disturbed me.

• I Spit On Your Grave (couldn't get past the rape scene)
• The Hills Have Eyes (I thought the mutant rape scene was horrific)
• Event Horizon (this pulls on emotional tendrils of loss that stayed with me - also the concept of complete and utter eternal Hell - really disturbed me)
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre (there are aspects of torture and of sexual abuse, both of which definitely stuck with me)

The "scary" movies just make me jump and cling to my poor boyfriend's arm. The "disturbing" movies generally actually upset me afterwards; I have SERIOUS issues with sexual abuse on screen, especially if the victim is female; this might be part of the reason why I have a difficult time with Rob Zombie movies. Notice here how two of the movies on this list are both "disturbing" AND "scary." Both Event Horizon and TCM: The Beginning have good suspense and also generally disturbing moments.

I think that some aspect of horror definitely has to be "real," in one way, shape, or form. Let's face it: You need to feel ACTUAL threat in order to response in a horror/fearful sort of way.

But, I think, in this pursuit of what "scares" you, we need to define "scare" because there is a significant difference between "scare" and "disturb." They can definitely overlap, yet. But they are not inextricably bound.

Personally, I have a BIG problem watching torture and abusive films. And I've just realized lately that I cannot tolerate seeing animals killed or abused either (or alluded to being abused - Most recently I watched an episode of Carnivale where it was alluded to a cat being drowned, and I could feel myself welling up). That is the stuff that truly disturbs me.