We came, we revisited, we conquered our childhood fears.
Deja Boo, we hardly knew ye! Over the past three weeks, intrepid writers here at Nerds of a Feather dug deep and revisited the (mostly) horror movies that scarred us — at least as far as we can remember.
There are strange souls such as myself that enjoy horror as an adult and regularly consume visual media that frightens. Many others, meanwhile, tend to avoid them. I believe these two paths both stem from the same impetus: being scared as a child. One group wants to recreate that fearful sensation, while the other would be happy to never experience such things again.
What decides who gets placed in what group, and why? The world may never know, unfortunately. From my experiences this month and the various posts by my brethren, it is very clear that kids are extremely susceptible to being spooked. This isn't anything new, of course. Kids are born into a world with zero context and absolutely wild imaginations. Every day, they're making sense of the world, and extraordinary or horrific things throw a lever into the burgeoning machine-works of their little brains.
What's clear from our Deja Boo experiment is that our childhood fears tend to be focused on images, and not entire cinematic experiences. This makes sense, as even the scariest films have minutes upon minutes that are in fact not scary. But the images that get burned into young retinas and seared into our memories can remain for decades. What's even scarier is that you probably don't even have to have seen a movie to be scarred by it: commercials, posters, schoolyard chat, and the VHS boxes at the video store can also serve as triggers.
This is what makes scary movies so, well, scary to kids. The potential for a fright lurks around every corner, and there's not much you can do to avoid it. Such is the vulnerable plight of being a young human in the world.
As an adult, I pride myself on being unspookable. But here, I believe, is the perfect place to announce my caveat: I do not enjoy A24 horror. Midsommar? Absolutely not. Hereditary? I will never. Modern prestige horror is based on trauma, and the emotional beating these movies deliver upon viewers is intense, and one I do not enjoy. Not because I'm scared, but because it makes me feel...weird and sad. Some would say that counts, but I'm not so sure.
Give me a haunted doll, a creepy house, or a bloody monster and I won't bat an eye. But the death of a person's entire family after tragic circumstances? I'm utterly destroyed and despondent.
Perhaps that's what changes as you get older. The usual frights and scares begin to dissipate and are replaced by adult fears: job loss, cancer, and crushing guilt over past actions. The opening to Midsommar still wrecks me when I think about it (if you know you know). And this despite the fact that the film takes places in blazing white sunlight — not a shadow or monster around.
One thing that stuck out to me during my rewatches was just how often comedy and horror are combined, especially in the formative years of my youth. The 1980s horror genre was chock full of gallows humor, but at the time I was too young to grasp it. I'm not beating myself up here, most kids can't parse such opposite emotions. But I think the horror comedy genre is fascinating, and something I may want to explore next year in another series like Deja Boo.
The concept goes back almost as far as horror itself, considering Abbott and Costello met nearly all of the Universal Monsters. Combining the two genres gives wide room to play with conflicting feelings, all while reveling in the absurdity that's created when they collide. Some are gross, some are hilarious, and some are psychedelic excursions into wackiness( looking at you, House).
Looking back on the films I and my fellow flock members revisited, I can say that it's a worthwhile activity to engage in during spooky season. I mentioned my quest to a few friends recently and everyone had a story about a movie they saw way too young that has stuck with them. It's comforting to know that we all have similar formative experiences as children, no matter where we grew up or how old we are. My generation had Child's Play, my mother's had Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and my grandmother's had The Blob. Kids today have 100+ years of horror cinema to be traumatized by, including brand new releases on streaming channels that are released weekly.
For anyone curious about digging into their childhood psyche to revisit old fears, I highly recommend it. You're braver than you think.
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POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.
