On Horror Movies

I recently watched the newest iteration of It at a friend's house. I found the movie to be really excellent. Bill Hader stole the show, combining witty one-liners and expert comedic timing with excellent, emotional acting. Before beginning the movie, one of my friends expressed disinterest in the film for its seeming paranormal themes. What he said made me think about why I avoided horror for so long and why ultimately my opinion has changed about it. It can be easy to look at any number of horror films and see the forces of Hell and the devil at work. Having actually watched some horror movies, now, however, I see that there is more to them than that. Horror movies follow in a long tradition of scary stories that ultimately have a positive message that we all need.

The film tells the story of several childhood friends and their quest to fight a great and evil force, currently in the form of a clown, a disguise which it uses to lure misfit children to their death, which is typically brought about by the entity's massive teeth. In order to defeat this evil being, the friends must team up and together face their worst fears together and defeat them.

This common theme of facing fears to defeat evil can be seen in any number of great horror films. As Above, So Below, a found footage style film about several friends exploring the Parisian catacombs follows this same pattern. Even films like the classic The Sixth Sense or Gothika deal with it indirectly.

The controversial psychologist and philosopher Jordan Peterson has noticed this same pattern across innumerable horror films, and in many other stories humans tell one another, many going back tens of thousands of years. Peterson, following Augustine, notes that a monster is something that shows (Latin monstrum monstrat): monsters show us what we fear, and are at the same time the manifestation of our fears, requiring some sort of response.

It is the response that I believe makes or breaks a horror movie, and is ultimately why I have come to appreciate the horror genre. A good horror movie teaches the viewer to own their own fears, face them, and defeat them through confrontation, rather than running from them. This, I believe, is the underlying message of It and places it in a long tradition of myths. I find this to be a useful discipline in dealing with anxiety, as it often reveals that the problems I must face are often smaller than I initially believed.