I Like to Watch | What Scares You
by Don Smith
"What scares me is what scares you. We're all afraid of the same things. That's why horror is such a powerful genre."
That quotation is attributed to one of the undisputed "Masters of Horror," John Carpenter. Carpenter's bonafides are indelibly etched into cinematic history; seriously, just google the guy - you've seen at least one of his celluloid masterpieces. But as I get older, the things that scare me have become a lot more tangible than a silent, suburban psycho in a white mask or a recently defrosted Antarctic alien parasite.
It was October 1981. My dad's sister/my godmother, Aunt Debbie, was babysitting me in the apartment my parents had above the funeral home they operated (dad was a funeral director/embalmer, mom did the hair & makeup of the dearly departed). Auntie DD put me to bed, but she had a couple friends come over for pizza and a movie and at some point, probably playing-up the creepy atmosphere of the setting.
There must have been something in the autumn air because I couldn't sleep; at some point I was lured into the frontchroom (that's what some of us from Chicago call the "living room") by the soft blue glow of the boob tube and two repetitive notes of what would turn out to be Carpenter's haunting synth score for the 1978 version of Halloween. The original distribution company, Compass International Pictures, had sold the broadcast rights to NBC to the tune of 3 million bucks in 1980, and that deal changed my life.
As I huddled in a slim doorway just out of DD & Co.'s view, my tiny eyes grew 10x as I was confronted with the body of Annie Bracket laying supine in bed, the headstone of Judith Myers acting as a morbid headboard. Laurie Strode (one of the first, and truly THE undisputed "Scream Queen") had just discovered one of her best friends, DEAD; murdered and posed by some unseen entity. That image is forever burned into my brain and birthed an undying fascination with the genre.
Unlike a lot of things from my pseudo-latchkey childhood, I never outgrew my love of HORROR: movies, novels, comic books, The Haunted Mansion at Disney, Hollywood Horror Nights at Universal... I still look forward to and consume all of it!
That said, I've noticed that what used to really get under my skin, what used to scare the shit out of me has shifted.
As an actor (and novice filmmaker/screenwriter) the literal curtain was pulled back about 20 years ago. Now, when I revisit the films/stories I love, I can't help but notice all of the machinations. What I wasn't expecting when I got into "the business of show," and I'm not sure anyone can really prepare you for (in or out of the business), were all the REAL fears that come with getting older.
While I still thrill at the tension of watching a group of young, "hot" people running through the woods to escape some masked murderer, or experiencing supernatural specters haunt a defenseless family, I've noticed in the last 10 years that what really terrifies me now can be summed up in one word: ADULTING.
A mortgage, the bills, keeping my family fed and feeling loved, almost losing my wife during childbirth, doing what we can to make sure our daughter has a trauma-free childhood and instill in her a sense of love and safety amidst an ever-growing drive by the GOP to control her body, hustling to keep alive the dream career I've been developing for decades... Losing friends and family to cancer, heart attacks, old age, suicide... Credit card fraud, identity theft, friends just not wanting to be friends any longer, etc. etc. These things are terrifying, folks. And there are no easy resolutions to any of them.
For every scare that a new fright flick offers I can't help but be even more freaked out by films like The Big Short (Adam McKay's 2015 film about the 2007 financial meltdown), or McKay's 2018 film Cheney, about the pasty, power-hungry ghouls in G.W. Bush's White House. Don't even get me started on the horrifying documentaries about the U.S. healthcare system (Michael Moore's Sicko 2007), drug addiction (Dope Sick Love 2005), mental health (There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane 2011), homelessness (Dark Days 2000), the evils of social media (The Great Hack 2019). The list could go on.
By their nature, documentaries (and docudramas) are meant to inform and are, in some cases (nay most), a call to action. Of the other major film genres, we can (and hope to) experience drama, comedy, romance; even action, and dare I say musicals in our day to day lives. Hopefully most of us will get our tragedy and thrillers parsed out over a lifetime.
Horror is the only genre that NO ONE wants to experience in real life. And while the genre doesn't necessarily prepare you for the real-world "monsters" out there, it is the only genre that allows you to safely observe terror without having your life irreparably altered by physically experiencing it. In other words, it affords resolution. Not always a tied up in a pretty bow, but a resolution, nonetheless.
Unlike the thousands of ghouls, ghosts, goblins and masked murderers stalking cinema, horror movies themselves will never die.
Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but eventually..."What scares me is what scares you."