Fatma

I’ve recently realized that I love the simple things that life offers me—reading, lying out in my back garden on a sunny day, and watching horror films really make me happy. However, I’m slightly concerned that after watching all three Paranormal Activity movies and Insidious, I was not scared at all. I thought that I would have trouble sleeping or nightmares, but nothing happened. In fact, I’ve had great sleep the past few days. I’m proud of myself. That’s a quality that I always found cool—not being afraid of horror films—and I’ve only recently discovered that about myself.

I grew up on horror films from the ’80s and ’90s—A Nightmare on Elm Street, IT, Scream—where everything is colorful (the clothes, the scenery). Watching these newer horror films feels weird, because they all have grey tones to them and thrive on intensely scary moments. I hate that, though, because I think the best horror films have parts that stay in your mind for a long time, not ones that make you jump for a few seconds. One of my favorite horror films is IT because it has such scary, memorable scenes in it. There’s the part where Beverly Marsh goes back to her childhood home and has tea with the old lady who now lives there, but the old lady takes the form of Beverly’s fear (a weird looking demon) and when Beverly runs out of the house and turns around, the house is boarded up and abandoned. This was so scary to me, when I first watched this film, at eight years old, with my older cousins. I didn’t really want to watch it, but I also didn’t want to look like a baby in front my older cousins. I don’t think I have ever sweated as much as I did when I went home that night and attempted to fall asleep.

As I’ve grown older, my fears are a lot more rational (of flying, death, and vomiting), but I still love how horror films can pick our brains, to show us what we’re most afraid of. ♦