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Hey there, my wretched little wrecks, and welcome to Spooky Season.
I’m trying something new this season. If you’ve been around for a while then you know I love a good horror movie.
But recently, I was thinking not only about how anxious people tend to gravitate towards horror films, but also what happens for me while I’m watching one. What am I like before the movie? What am I like after?
And what if—go with me here—it could be turned into an exercise in mindfulness? What if I watched 31 horror movies over the course of 31 days of October (the peak of spooky season) and record how I’m feeling before, during, after?
What if I monitor what comes up for me while I watch? Could I learn something new about my anxiety? Or will I just give myself nightmares? Why not come along with me for this weird ride and bizarre experiment?
Each week, I’ll log my experiences here in the newsletter. And every week will have a (very loose) theme for the movies/TV series that I choose to watch. For my first week, it’s all about the body horror.
That’s right, things are got unsettling and weird right from the jump.
My self-imposed rules for this challenge:
If the movie is categorized as a horror movie or incorporate elements of horror (ex: jump scares, monsters, zombies, whatever), that counts. Meaning that a horror comedy like “Shaun of the Dead” or “Jennifer’s Body” can count as horror, even if it is not considered to be solely scary.
Re-watching a horror movie I’ve seen before still counts as having watched a horror movie.
If I watch 2-3 episodes of a horror TV series in a day, that counts as one (1) horror movie. The same goes for short films—2-3 short films can count as one (1) feature length horror movie.
As long as I watch 31 horror movies within the 31 days, that counts. Meaning, it’s ok to skip a day so long as I make up for it at a later date.
I can stop halfway through a movie if something freaks me out too much to finish. If this happens, I’ll read the plot on Wikipedia and react to that in the newsletter. (I’ve only had two movies effect me in that way so it is unlikely to happen, but I gotta make a rule anyway.)
I won’t include spoilers in any of my write-ups. Nor will I include any gnarly or gross details. In other words, if you’re not a horror movie fan, you can still read and enjoy this without it being too much.
So if you’re down for the ride, come follow along with me.
Day 1: “Saw”
Quick Wikipedia summary: The film tells a nonlinear narrative, revolving around the mystery of the Jigsaw Killer, who tests his victims' will to live by putting them through deadly "games" where they must inflict great physical pain upon themselves to survive.
I’d never actually seen this classic. It is one of those movies that became So Notorious that I just figured it was too frightening to ever watch myself. So I read the Wikipedia plot points, cringed at them, and went on with my life.
But I’m glad I actually sat down and watched this. Because holy hell is it scary. But also? The frenetic pace of it was really absorbing. I wasn’t feeling very well before I watched it and honestly? It distracted me. It got me out of my own head and out of my own body (without having to perform surgery on myself, thank goddess). Or maybe it made me more aware of my body, or more accurately, the parts of my body that were not entrapped by sadistic torture devices (that is to say, all of it).
I guess though that what helped me to watch this movie was just how absurd the plot truly is. The movies I find most disturbing are the ones that touch on a specific chord that rings true to me and my life. And being chained up in a creepy bathroom with a stranger and some dead guy? Well, I’m grateful I get to say that’s not really my reality.
Plus, it’s honestly just a really good movie. Did I have a nightmare that night? Sure, but I don’t really remember it, so maybe that’s not even related?
Day 2: “Eli”
Quick Wikipedia summary: The film follows a boy with a rare autoimmune disease who is taken by his parents to a private medical facility to be cured.
This was the second day of me not feeling great, so I chose a movie in which the protagonist also did not feel good.
This one had some genuinely good jump-scares, and the first 2/3rds were genuinely compelling, even when cliché (like the protagonist wants to be a magician—do that many kids really want to be magicians anymore?). But then the last 1/3…there were twists and turns I did not see coming. And not in a good way.
Honestly, this movie made me anxious because I started questioning how much of the movie I’d actually absorbed. Did I miss the signs? Was Chekhov’s gun in the first 2/3rds and I missed it? Where did this plot even come from? But no—some easy Reddit sleuthing reassured me that a lot of other viewers were also confused.
I don’t need a movie to make me question my own sanity. Trust me, I do plenty of that all on my own.
That being said, I did have a nightmare that involved a haunted house so take that for what its worth.
Day 3: “Eraserhead”
One-line Wikipedia summary: Henry (John Nance) resides alone in a bleak apartment surrounded by industrial gloom. When he discovers that an earlier fling with Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) left her pregnant, he marries the expectant mother and has her move in with him. Things take a decidedly strange turn when the couple's baby turns out to be a bizarre lizard-like creature that won't stop wailing.
Another notorious movie I’ve never seen. There are some people who love to marinate themselves in David Lynch movies in all their unsettling glory. Alas, I am not one of them. Lynchians are more about vibes than narrative, and I’m a narrative girlie through and through.
First of all, watching this movie I was brought back to all the terrible undergrad short film screenings I watched in college. I realized I’d seen a lot of these surreal horror stylistic choices and cinematography poorly recreated by hipster dudes circa 2009.
As I was watching, my husband joined me for a bit and I asked him: On a scale from 1 to 10, how much do you like David Lynch? To which he (correctly) responded, I don’t know if I like David Lynch’s movies but I do respect him.
Anyway—this shit was influential for a lot of people, clearly. And watching a David Lynch movie is, if nothing else, absorbing. Lynch’s dissonant and offbeat aesthetics and style are truly one-of-a-kind. The man’s a worldbuilder, alright, even if that means long shots of a goth proto-Kramer wandering through an industrial hellpscape while some kind of John Cage-ian nightmare score plays in the background as a baby wails.
Which reminds me: in college, I worked as an usher at a performance arts center. A number of times, the house orchestra would play John Cage music. My friends and I used to try to find a way to describe just how dissonant that kind of music was: like if someone tried to make a choir out of kettles; like an infinite amount of nails on a chalkboard; a torture practice that defied the Geneva Convention.
But the best way I’ve come to describe it? It is art that sounds like if a period cramp could make a sound, just on a loop.
That’s kind of what Eraserhead is like—like a John Cage piece, which is to say, a period cramp come to life. Does it help my anxiety? No. Arguably, it’s just another artistic rendition of my anxiety stretched to last an hour and twenty-seven minutes.