In Brightest Day: Horror Movies

I love horror movies. Love them. The problem with horror movies is you either love them or hate them. There is no middle ground. Because of that, I can rarely find people to watch horror with me. I simply don’t know enough horror-lovers out there. My closest friends even hate horror. My girlfriend hates horror. It’s a hard knock life.

And while there are some absolutely awful horror movies out there, there are some that are crafted gems. And in those works one can look deeply into a disturbed mind.

I love horror because I could never kill another human. But in the best horror movies, there are killers who do it effortlessly. To them, it’s the same as me brushing my teeth or eating breakfast. It’s part of life.

So it blows my mind when a character, for whatever psychological reason, loses so much of their “humanity” that they feel killing another human is the norm. Even the supernatural killers have a psychological reasoning behind their madness. The worst movies have weak reasoning, but the best have multi-layered thoughts that make the viewer question their own subconscious.

Let’s take the supernatural out of a killer like Michael Myers. Yes, Myers is a monster in Halloween. There is very little story behind Myers in the first Halloween. As the series progresses, however, we learn that Myers was a disturbed boy who was locked up in a mental institution after he killed his parents. Ignoring all the weird sequels, you find that Myers has a deep need for family, and that killing his family seemed to make sense in his mind. It gives viewers a view into the mind of a monster, while letting the viewer stay away from the actual concept of “going insane and killing someone”.

There are also psychological thrillers and horror movies that deal less with the supernatural and use pure humans in their roles. Let’s take the issues that show up in The Purge. The movie wasn’t very good at all, but it did dive into a concept that I think is very interesting.

We know that humans can be violent. The concept of The Purge is that, to quell violence for the majority of the year, the United States allows all crime to be legal for twelve hours during an event called The Purge.

Without going into plot details (it’s kind of a new movie), I can say that this movie goes into the jealousy and aggression some humans have for others. It asks a great question too: if you hate someone or something and had the ability to kill them without remorse, would you? Most people say no, but this movie explores those who say yes. It also lets the viewer ask how mad would you have to be to kill another human, simply for release.

I will be reviewing more horror movies as time goes on. I think this is an untapped genre that can be viewed through a disability study lens. If you have a movie you want me to look at, let me know in the comments.