We are living in strange, scary days.
And I’m scared. I’m scared of what the COVID-19 pandemic is doing – and could yet do – to our world. To my country, my state, my city. My friends, my family, my parents. My wife. My kids. I’m scared of what could happen to people I know, and to people I don’t know. I’m alarmed by a lot of the information I am learning; I’m scared of how much we still don’t know.
I watch the news every day. I want to be as informed as possible. I read the online newspapers; I browse social media. Twitter is the only platform I still use; I quit Facebook and Instagram before this all started, and even Twitter is frankly a little more than I can handle sometimes. Sometimes I have to just hit stop on the whole thing, shut off the internet, turn off the news and stare at the clouds out the window. Sometimes it’s too much.
In those moments I look for various escapes, like so many of us do. When I’m overwhelmed, or when I’m bored, when I want to fall asleep, when I want to be transported someplace else, or sometimes just as a little reward for making it through a demanding day of childcare, I watch television. Movies. Read books. And in these strange, scary days, I find myself gravitating more and more toward… well, horror.
Right now I’m watching WAR OF THE WORLDS on EPIX, which is so far a particularly bleak, realistic take on the classic source material. I’ve watched Richard Stanley’s COLOR OUT OF SPACE twice now, twice choosing to experience a story about a family succumbing to a horrific contamination that literally dropped on them from the sky. My parents, themselves self-isolating a few miles away, are eagerly catching up on THE WALKING DEAD, itself a portrait of the violent struggles of those who have yet to succumb to a global pandemic that animates the dead.
And we aren’t alone. During this time of incredible anxiety, tragedy and uncertainty, people are signing up for SHUDDER – the fantastic streaming service exclusively featuring horror content – in record numbers. My Twitter feed is littered with people asking for horror movie recommendations. People have also flocked to watch Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film CONTAGION (which is absolutely a horror film, I would argue).
CONTAGION is a particularly interesting example to me; why are people flocking to a story that is basically just a slightly worse version of what they’re seeing on the evening news? It’s eerie how similar that film is to the reality we are inhabiting right now. Why seek that out?
All of this has gotten me once again thinking about the nature, benefits, and importance of the horror genre.
When I was a kid, I hated horror. Hated it. I was a very, very scared kid. When friends would put on scary movies, I would hide. I’d make excuses to skip sleepovers. If I was stuck somewhere where something scary was on television, I’d hide behind the couch. Or my fingers. I’d look away, a few feet to the right of the television, monitoring the screen peripherally while I waited for the scary moment to pass.
Horror films evoke big emotions. Primal emotions, at that. It is a genre that is designed to create a sense of dread in the viewer. Or a sense of shock. To trigger that ancient fight or flight response. To cause anxiety. To create stress. To hold our faces toward the dark, to dangle us over the abyss.
Why do we seek this out? Why do we “enjoy” these feelings in the context of our entertainment, while we view the same emotions as downright unbearable and unhealthy in our day to day lives?
As I found myself more and more frightened as a kid, I finally turned away from horror films in favor of horror literature. Specifically, I gravitated toward R.L. Stine, and then Christopher Pike, and then Stephen King (who would prove to be the most profound creative influence of my life).
Horror books would be easier to manage than horror films, I thought. After all, I could always close the book. And it would be more in my control, because instead of being forced to see things in a movie or on television, this would all exist in my imagination. That would be less frightening, I figured.
I was wrong about the second part but correct about the first part. Yes, I could close the book. But I found that doing so didn’t eliminate those feelings of anxiety, stress, dread, or fear… in fact, it made them worse. The experience was unfinished if I closed the book. The outcome of the moment was unknown. Unknown, it turns out, is the bedrock of what horror and fear are all about – and faced with the unknown, my imagination, which I thought would protect me and be gentler than reality somehow, turned out to be worse than what lay in store on the page, nearly every time.
“Just make it through this little bit,” I’d tell myself. “Just this scary part. Just make it through this.”
It would take me many years to realize just what I was doing as I consumed horror fiction in my youth. “Just this little bit” became “just this page.” That eventually became “just this chapter” and soon the story was over and I was back in the real world, which was already taking on that illusory sheen of being “safe” and “ordinary”… which is, frankly, the greatest trick the world ever pulled, isn’t it.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but horror was working on me in one of its most important and profound ways: it was making me braver. Just a little bit, just an inch at a time, but it was happening alright. It was teaching me how to be brave in short bursts, in controlled increments.
It was, I’d later realize, similar to physical exercise… but of exercise in courage. Exercise of character.
By high school I found myself drawn intensely toward the films that had terrified me in my childhood. All of those movies I’d skipped, all of those films whose covers were too scary for me in the video store, all of those titles that my friends had talked about for years – I was ravenously consuming them now. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. THE THING. THE FLY. THE EXORCIST. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Man, was this exciting. It was a whole new world for me, and I ran toward it with everything I had.
As the years went on, the genre had done its job so well that it became almost impossible to scare me. This genre that had so frightened me as a child, that had so traumatized me, was now completely woven into the fabric of my life. It actually began to define me. And today, I owe it everything… horror is my career. Horror is my livelihood.
I have built my entire life upon Horror.
Horror is universal. It is one of the first experiences that each and every human being on this planet will have, hardwired into us by 200,000 years of evolution. Among the very first powerful emotions any of us will have is a healthy fear of the dark. We learn that fear before we learn how to speak.
And here is a genre that is misunderstood, dismissed by some who do not realize what an amazing function it is performing. Horror allows us to explore that darkness – in ourselves, in our world, in anxiety, in possibility, the worst-case scenarios, the unthinkable, the impossible, the inevitable, the avoidable, the tragic, the nightmares within and without – and it allows us to explore them safely.
In exploring that imaginary darkness, in staring into a representation of those various abysses, it makes us just a little more prepared to stare into the real ones when they appear. It is exercise for the mind, catharsis in its most extreme, and a fascinating contradiction – in depicting violence, insanity, and evil, this genre encourages empathy, courage and understanding.
We put our trust in the genre as we engage with it. We invite it to put us through the wringer – we embrace the anxiety, dread, stress, and shock of it. We stand at the edge of the cliff. Our heart rate increases, our breath quickens and we swim in the dark waters of our most primal, powerful feelings… and then the lights come on, the credits roll, or the book closes and we are returned, safe and sound, back into the real world.
That, I think, is why we flock to horror in times like these. That is why I found myself watching CONTAGION – because it was a version of the horrors of real life right now, but with closing credits. With an ending. The genre gives us tiny little bursts of bravery, tiny morsels of courage that can accumulate over time to help us deal just a little better with the horrors of the real world… and it also gives us the most profound gift: an ending. A reprieve. A conclusion.
Because the world isn’t safe, or ordinary, is it. No, the world has teeth. The world is a hungry place; a dark place. And the world has its own brand of horror – what we put on screen, or in a book, is just a pale shadow of the real deal. In the same way that the little morsels of courage we find in the genre are pale imitations of the real deal.
REAL courage, real bravery, can be found in the eyes of the first responders. Of the doctors and nurses in our hospitals, right now, who literally stand at the edge of a very real cliff, reaching out to pull others to safety. They know real horror, and they know real courage.
I wonder where that strength comes from. I wonder, like many of us do, if I could ever find it, if put to a real test. I don’t know the answer. And that… scares me.
We live in a scary world, but we are capable of great courage. Great bravery in the face of the darkness. Whatever in our lives helps us develop those muscles, whatever gives us exercise in courage, empathy, and yes, kindness… I am grateful that those things exist. I am humbled to see their results, visible in our world every day.
And I’m glad to have found, in my own life, something that helps sew small moments of courage into the fabric of my life, however small those moments are in the grand scheme of things.
Because let’s face it – the nastiest, most terrifying, most vicious, most disturbing thing we could ever dream of in the horror genre doesn’t hold a candle to the horrors of the real world. The real world, as we are periodically reminded, is home to real horrors. Our shadow puppets are pathetic little imitations, it turns out.
I am amazed to be reminded to what extent the real world is home to real courage. To real bravery. And to real heroes. And anything that can move us just a millimeter toward their kind of courage, in the face of such horrors… well, that’s a fine thing.
Just make it through this little bit. Just make it through today. Just a little bit at a time.
I wish each of you health, safety and kindness in these strange, scary days.
And to those on the front lines – in hospitals, laboratories, supermarkets, nursing homes, delivery trucks, and so many other places – thank you for your lessons in true courage.
Thank you.