I’m a horror fan who can’t watch horror movies.
It’s confusing, I know! But it’s true. You see, as a teen and into my early adulthood, I was obsessed with scary movies. It started with Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer and wound up with me systematically renting out every single title in the horror section at the local Video Ezy as part of their “7 weeklies for $7” deal.
If I was at home alone on a Saturday night, or woke up to a stormy day with nothing else on my schedule, a horror marathon was my go-to entertainment of choice. I’d drag along anyone I could find to see new releases at the cinema – including my extremely horror-averse boyfriend, who on one memorable date actually walked out of the theatre 20 minutes into the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, and refused to ever see a scary movie with me again. I had no sympathy for the fact that he was a giant chicken, and I never let him live it down.
But then something really weird happened: I became that giant chicken.
Oh, I didn’t walk out of any horror movies. I just stopped seeing them altogether. Sometime in the past few years – maybe around November 2016? – real life just became too stressful for me to enjoy scary movies anymore.
I’ve always had anxiety, and my baseline state of being is StReSsEd, but now – rather than the catharsis and joy that once greeted me when I saw a horror movie – they amp up my stress levels from “manageable” to “downright unbearable”.
The real world feels much darker and scarier than any horror movie could possibly conjure up. Everyday life is stressful. So when I sit in a darkened cinema, I no longer want to willingly put myself through two hours of EXTRA STRESS. I like my heartbeat to stay right where it is, thank you very much.
But there’s one massive problem with this late-onset horror allergy: I still love the stories.
And, more than anything, I want to be part of the ~cultural conversation~, which is especially challenging when horror movies absolutely dominate that conversation the way they have done ever since Get Out graced our screens. So what’s a scaredy cat pop culture nerd to do?
Why, turn to that bastion of 21st century enlightenment, of course: I Wikipedia it.
When a new horror movie comes out, I obsessively refresh the Wikipedia page until a decent synopsis has been uploaded. It usually happens pretty quickly, thank the spoiler gods. Everyone who actually sits through those movies and then writes detailed (but thankfully not gorily detailed) plot descriptions on Wikipedia are my anonymous heroes.
Thanks to these Wiki-angels, I can breezily discuss the big twist in Hereditary. I can go on at length about how A Quiet Place is an allegory for parenthood. I can even rattle off several fan theories about Us, and their relative merits in the context of the plot.
Sure, I’m totally fudging it. And I guess, with this confession, everyone will be able to call me on my BS.
But I’m putting it out there because I know I’m not alone. There’s a whole legion of chickens out there just like me who are turning to Wikipedia to light their way through the dark and scary world of horror. To them I say: solidarity, my fellow cowards.
Of course, I’d really love to be able to enjoy scary movies again. I’m sure that, like so many other anxiety-related things, they seem much worse in my head than they are in reality.
But until the world calms the eff down – or my stress levels find their way down to “calm” on a regular basis – I’ll stick to the safe confines of my black and white, bland and text-based Wikipedia comfort zone.
Maybe one day I’ll even get around to donating that $3 they’re always asking for.