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October has always been my favorite month. It was the month of Halloween and costumes and candy, and, best of all, scary movies. I have always loved horror movies, and some of my most comforting memories are of sprawling on the floor in front of an old TV the size of an old Buick and watching Creature Feature on Saturday mornings or Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Cujo, The Shining, Friday the 13th, or Poltergeist. It was best and most delicious when it was late at night and my mother was in bed or out with her friend of the month, and it was just me in the dark living room, awash in the eerie blue light of the television. The movies had a power they lacked in daylight, when you could be reassured by the hum of traffic outside or the growl and sputter of a distant lawnmower, and I often watched them all night long.
Sadly, October seems to be just another month now. Halloween has lost much of its potency, and even with the proliferation of channels, it's rare to find a spooky movie, much less an all-night marathon or weekend of wall-to-wall scares. And with access to any movie any time via streaming, the ones you do find are just another movie.
It doesn't help that most modern horror is garbage. I watched Ouija House the other night in a bid to get in the spirit of the season, and it was ninety minutes of nothing. It might've been passable were it not for the nonsensical ending tacked on for no other reason than that current trends demand that evil wins. Except they don't. The "Aha! The evil wins!" twist hasn't surprised anyone in fifteen years, and it certainly no longer subverts expectations. It's stale, and in a world in which evil wins almost every time, it provides no sense of catharsis. Why would I want to watch evil triumph in the land of make-believe when I can see that any time I choose by opening Twitter? The old horror movies may have been full of schlock and cheese and dubious internal logic, but the evil was defeated, at least until the sequel, and you didn't come away with a sense of futility.
And yet, I keep watching, keep hoping to recapture to magic, because I don't want to lose yet another something that used to bring me so much joy.
Sadly, October seems to be just another month now. Halloween has lost much of its potency, and even with the proliferation of channels, it's rare to find a spooky movie, much less an all-night marathon or weekend of wall-to-wall scares. And with access to any movie any time via streaming, the ones you do find are just another movie.
It doesn't help that most modern horror is garbage. I watched Ouija House the other night in a bid to get in the spirit of the season, and it was ninety minutes of nothing. It might've been passable were it not for the nonsensical ending tacked on for no other reason than that current trends demand that evil wins. Except they don't. The "Aha! The evil wins!" twist hasn't surprised anyone in fifteen years, and it certainly no longer subverts expectations. It's stale, and in a world in which evil wins almost every time, it provides no sense of catharsis. Why would I want to watch evil triumph in the land of make-believe when I can see that any time I choose by opening Twitter? The old horror movies may have been full of schlock and cheese and dubious internal logic, but the evil was defeated, at least until the sequel, and you didn't come away with a sense of futility.
And yet, I keep watching, keep hoping to recapture to magic, because I don't want to lose yet another something that used to bring me so much joy.
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