I'm in a personal confession kind of mood tonight...
As you all know, I'm a huge SciFi & Fantasy fan. I love just about all of it from modern-day superheroes to Greek Mythology. Give me a well-made Anime show over a sitcom any day. I'd much rather curl up with the works of R.A. Salvatore than Dan Brown. I will re-rent Babylon 5 from Netflix enough that I should just buy the series. When I was 15, I wanted to be Wesley Crusher. I didn't care that he was even more of a dork than I was. (But not by much!) For years I assumed that the SciFi channel was made solely for my entertainment. I just couldn't figure out how they knew!
There's just one problem...
I can't stand horror movies. It may have started when I was 12-13 and a friend showed me Night of the Living Dead. Since then, I've tried all sorts of "Zombie therapy" from killing them in World of Warcraft to listening to John Coulton. Sure, I'm a huge Coulton fan now and I can slay a zombie faster than you can say "Braaaaaains," but they still creep me the fuck out.
Zombies are just the beginning of troubles...
As a teen-ager, I had to practically bolt my shoes to the floor when friends wanted to watch Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street. It's not that I was frightened (although I was) but that my imagination (to this day) does such an amazing job recreating the stuff when I'm asleep. Try waking up just once in an big, old, empty house from a nightmare after watching "the Fog" when your parents are away and see how fast you turn all the lights on.
Oddly, real life doesn't scare me at all...
When my old Volvo wagon hit that patch of ice and spun 360 degrees it didn't phase me. I just took a deep breath, re-started the car and drove on my way. The bear in the woods that time? He went his way, I went mine. The time some jerk flashed a knife outside the mens shelter I was volunteering at? Meh, we all lived. Remember, I'm the nut-job who used to draft behind city buses on my bicycle. Real life is not scary. But horror movies...
They don't go away, they just lie in wait...
When I got older, I just assumed I would be less of a wuss about this stuff. Nope! I tried watching Resident Evil two or three times now. Then someone gets zombiefied and it's all over.
It gets rough when really cool-looking stuff borders on fringes of horror. I love Vampire & werewolf movies until they slip over into the realms of horror. Blade? sure! Underworld? Great! 30 Day of Night? Yeah...no! I get cold shivers just thinking about it.
So, what's the problem?
Well, I was staring at the "Add" button for Cloverfield tonight and I just couldn't do it. Which also reminded me that I totally missed The Host. My urge to watch stuff like this is high. The probability is rather low. Sigh!
You win some ... you die screaming.
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