The most formative movies in my life have probably been horror movies, not necessarily because they are wholesome pieces of media that have deep moral messages, but because I watched them with my friends, and in theaters with so many others who were going through the same experience as me, and they are what made me fall in love with cinema in the first place. In recent years, the most successful movies in theaters profit wise have been horror movies, because they can be made for a lower budget, and people love going to the theaters and getting scared together. Fear is such a primal emotion, and it causes adrenaline to be released into your body, and it is like how exercise can be addicting, because it is releasing dopamine. A person gets that feeling, and then they want to do it again, so they keep getting called back to scary movies. The movie that inspired me to write this was Sinister, which came out in 2012, and although I did not see it in the theaters, I did watch it in college with my cohort, and it definitely left its impact on us, and it became a regular reference, especially at night.
Sinister is the story of a true crime writer, Ellison, and his family, who are brought along on his investigative escapades. He had one famous book, and he is chasing that fame, trying to find another big money maker, but what he finds is much more sinister (pun intended). He moves his family into the house of the family that was brutally murdered in a group hanging, which is the opening footage of the film, and he does not tell his wife or kids that they are living in the house of the crime that he is researching.
In the attic, when he is moving boxes into the house, he finds a box of super 8 film, and on those films, there is footage of families being brutally murdered. Clearly this is something very disturbing to find, even for a true crime writer, who kind of hits the jackpot of found evidence, but that is not all it comes with. Frightening things start to happen in the house at night, and this scares the family out of the house, but little do they know that the fleeing seals their fate, and the connections are made too late.
The start of this film is incredibly disturbing. The found footage of multiple families being slaughtered is beyond unsettling, and it is paired with some seriously eerie music that will make goosebumps go down your spine. Then in each film Ellison starts to see that there is some other presence in each of the shots, Mr. Boogey, who is later revealed to be some ancient demon that feeds off of children, and although initially he seems creepy, by the end of the movie, the scares kinds of ware off, and there are some not scary zombie children running around a house, but the first half plus of this movie is one of the scarier movies I have seen.
So as college kids, we made sure to capitalize on this fear. Berry College is in rural Northwest Georgia, and the campus is placed in some beautiful nature, and it is separated into two campuses, main campus, where most of the student population lives, and mountain campus, where the special WinShape scholars live, and where many of the trails start. Immediately after we finished watching Sinister, we packed into a car in the middle of the night, and we drove to Mountain Campus to do the only logical thing for college aged boys to do, walk back four miles on a trail and try to scare the crap out of each other. This involved yelling out at each other and saying that we saw something hiding in the woods, or that we heard something. It also resulted in us running and hiding and getting really quiet, so that we could scare each other.
Another night, we went out to Fouche Gap, another famed place in Berry Lore, which you have to drive to. It is at the top of a hill, and it overlooks some mountains and forest in the distance, and it is just an all around beautiful place, and if you go at night like we did, then you get a beautiful view of the stars, because you are a little more out there, and you are high up, but of course we used this opportunity to hide again, and to specifically try and scare one of our friends, who would freak out the most, and we all hid for minutes at a time and slowly came out and scared him. The music in this movie, especially the song from the end credits, is very recognizable and creepy. So another thing we would do at night was in the dark of the dorm room, we would turn everything off, and wait for one of our friends to come back from the bathroom or wherever, and we would play the music while hiding, which also proved to be a pretty effective scare.
All of this is to say that when I was watching Sinister, and reflecting on these fun memories, a line from a song kept coming to my mind, “It’s so much better when we’re scared together.” This comes from Silver Sun Pickups jam, Scared Together, which was one of my songs of the Summer last year. There have been so many times in my life, going back to middle school, and continuing on till the end of college, where I have gone to see a scary movie with my friends, or we watched one at home, and we all had a blast watching something creepy together and reveling in the experience, and like all good friends do, we then try to scare each other to further the enjoyment.
The great thing is that this is not just watching it with friends, although that is the best option, but it also works with watching it in a packed theater. There might not be the connection with the strangers and the ability to try and scare them after, but sitting in a big theater and being able to hear other people jump and gasp, or my personal favorite cringe or groan at the same time as you is a great experience. These are reactions that do not normally happen in other films, and when people are leaving depending on how scary or deranged the movie is, you can see it on the audiences’ face.
So scary movies are one of the most profitable, because people love to be scared, and even more so, they love to be scared together. This can be with friends or even complete strangers. The vast majority of the time when I go to the movies, it is alone, but if I go at the right time, it is in a theater filled with other people waiting to be scared, sitting on the edge of their seats and holding their breath. There are times when I pick an early showtime for a scary movie during the workday, and there will just be me in the theater or a couple of others sparsely populating the theater, and this is just not that same although being in a theater alone and watching a really spooky movie is its own kind of terrifying. I definitely believe in the saying that it is so much better when we are scared together.
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