#horror article

Step 1: Decide on what you want. One thing that you should do before trying to get a serious horror movie experience, is decide what sort of experience you want to have. Do you want to be really scared, really captivated, surprised, or just highly amused? You want your movie experience to match what sort of mood you’re in.

Step 2: Select your fellow audience. I personally enjoy watching horror movies by myself, but you might prefer to watch them with a significant other, a group of friends, your family, etc. That’s really up to you, but it’s important to choose people who are looking to have the same movie experience you are. For instance, you don’t want to invite someone over who is just going to make jokes all the way through if you’re hoping to get really scared or really involved with the movie. You want to be with people who will add to the experience, not detract from it.

Step 3: Wait until dark. If you scare easily, feel free to skip this step, but I find that I have a better time watching horror movies at night, regardless of whether I’m there to laugh or there to get scared.

Step 4: Get refreshments beforehand. Popcorn is a vital part of the movie experience, at least to me. So is soda. Ideally I’d also have a Slim Jim or two. You know what sort of snacks you like best, and it’s always a good idea to have them on hand before you press play so that you don’t have to make a food-run mid-film.

Step 5: Choose a movie to match the mood. If you’re selecting a movie you’ve never seen before, this can be a little trickier to do, but it never hurts to do just a little bit of research on movies before you watch them (even if all you have time for is reading a description and checking the rating on Netflix.) If you want to be really and truly terrified, you should maybe stay away from B-Horror. If you’re looking for something more light-hearted or less gory, you might want to not choose a torture porn kind of film. Again, this just depends on what you feel like watching at the time.

Step 6: Get comfortable. It’s hard to focus on enjoying anything if you’re not in a good position, so get as comfortable as you possibly can. Sit in your favorite spot, grab your favorite blanket, whatever you need to do to be prepared to relax.

Press play, and enjoy!

Thanks so much for the suggestion Anon, and if you’re reading this and it’s not what you had in mind, feel free to drop in my askbox and let me know what specifically you’d like to see answered.

Askbox Fuel

I love when these articles start discussions, and I love hearing from you guys - so drop by my ask/submit with the answers to the following questions so that we can talk about cool horror stuff!

One thing that this film succeeded in doing was projecting a feeling of tension and stress. It was a slow and steady build up to the very end. This is mainly because every single scene includes Rosemary, which means that the audience only knows what Rosemary knows and nothing more. As suspenseful as this is, it suggests that maybe the entire story was all in her mind. It was a bout of paranoia that drove her further into insanity throughout the movie. She becomes more and more immersed in the delusion that the couple next door want to take her baby and began linking everyone and every event to that couple.

The paranoia could have been brought upon by the fact that in the late sixties the younger generation hugely distrusted the older generation. That fact in mind, it is possible that all of the events did occur. The point of the movie could be that the older generation was corrupted and that they were trying to corrupt the younger generation.

Rosemary, at most, was in her mid to late twenties and married to Guy, a man that seemed to be somewhere in his thirties. The cult that conspired against her was formed by people over the age of fifty. It is also important to realize that a cult is a symbol of conformity, giving up your identity to be part of a group and work towards a greater goal. They made an offer with Guy, telling him that if he conformed to them, giving up his morals and selling out his wife, that they would reward him with the fame and fortune that he had been working towards.

This directly reflects how the younger generations viewed the older generations. They believed that their elders were asking them to give up their beliefs in order to succeed in life. They thought they were being asked to give up their identities and conform.

Another way that they tried to get away from the older generation is through feminism. This is the time period in which many women began really trying to make a name for themselves in ways they believed they deserved.

Going along with this idea, Rosemary is portrayed as the woman being victimized by a man. Guy is using her for his own gain without considering her feelings. She is being used as though she’s not even a person.

It is also important to note that through out the movie, the women all seem to know that something is wrong. They are smart enough to catch onto what is happening. They are the moral ones that only want to help. This sheds a more positive light on women and it shows how greedy the men can be.

An important component of a lot of horror films is getting the viewers emotionally attached to the main character. This attachment has a way of instilling more fear in the audience since they want to see this person succeed. There’s more suspense. And since fully developing a character is necessary for this process to work, there’s more realism added to the story which makes the overall movie scarier to the audience. They feel they are watching these horrific events happen to actual people.

When it comes to slashers however, the focus is rarely on the victims. The killers are the most important part of the film. This takes away the emotional attachment. That’s the whole purpose of these movies, to slightly dehumanize a group of people so that moviegoers can watch the villain kill them and enjoy the sickness behind all of it. In fact, some of these stock slasher characters are made annoying on purpose, so that viewers grow angry with them and look forward to their last scene in the movie. It’s all about the killer and the way they rack up their body count.

To further explain this concept, lets take a look at a horror film that involves a killer that isn’t actually a slasher - Orphan. Before I go any further I should mention that the next two paragraphs may contain mild spoilers for those who have not see the movie, so readers beware.

The most basic storyline for Orphan is that a couple adopts a little girl and she tries to murder off the family members in order to have the father all to herself. The first scenes tell us about Kate and how she’s suffered a miscarriage and about the damage she caused when she didn’t handle it well. We’re given this tragic story mainly so that the audience can feel sympathetic towards the family, most of all towards Kate.

If this were a slasher, the viewer wouldn’t even know anything about the family until after Esther gets adopted. The first part of the film would revolve around Esther and how she got brought into the orphanage and the disastrous events that seem to follow her. She would find small things to use against Kate and to turn her and John against each other. By the end of the movie Esther would be viewed similarly to Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers. Viewers would be more likely to root for her.

The way that the story is told is changed. The movie becomes about the killing and the suspense rather than about the characters themselves.

Another huge difference demonstrated within the example is the point of view. Orphan is told mainly through Kate’s point of view, where as if it were a slasher the story would be seen more through Esther’s point of view. Another thing worth mentioning is that in horror movies, if there is any character development, it is typically seen through the victims rather than the villains. If the movie centers solely around the killer there is usually no character development.