Entry #4: Horror Movies

    A recent passion of mine would be watching horror movies. I blame my friend for introducing me to them. We transitioned from less popular scary movies to name brand movies. She first started me on the easier stuff, like The Conjuring or Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. Both are scary movies, but not the ones that terrified me. We watched ghost/demon movies, Japanese films, found footage, psychological movies, and more. I feel like I have watched every horror movie ever made with her. I wanted to talk about my all time favorite horror movies, why they're my favorite, and whether or not I recommend them. 

Warning: Some of the movies are quite scary and if you're sensitive to gore or death, please discontinue reading. I won't show any clips of anything scary, but I will have the movie posters. Most of these movies you can find on Netflix, but yee be warned.

    One of the first movies I watched with her was Terrifier, released in 2018. The antagonist in this movie is a clown painted in black and white, and he is basically a mime. He finds these two girls on Halloween and decides to follow them around until he captures one. The other friend tries to save her, but gets captured and the clown kills the girl in front of the other. He then goes on a killing spree, murdering whomever he comes across. He uses body language and silence to add to his creepy and stalker like character. His facial features specifically creeps you out because all he does is smile with his blood red/black teeth. Through this whole movie the actor that plays the clown doesn't say a word. He usually lurks from a distance and you can see him in the background of most shots. Seeing him in the background creates the scene's tense atmosphere, it acts as if something could happen at any moment. He also has a sense of humor through the movie by responding sarcastically to his victims. There's one scene where one of his victims escapes by stabbing him in the foot with a nail. He doesn't scream or yell at the pain, but flips the girl off, rips out the nail, and continues walking. The whole time I was terrified, the name was chosen perfectly for this movie. I remember sitting on a couch, snuggled next to my friends in the silence, waiting for one of the girls to escape. When the clown came around the corner, we screamed at the sudden jump scare. It was a thrilling movie, but very gory. This is one of my top ten favorite horror movies, probably at number 6.

Next would be The Ritual released 2017. I first saw a few clips of this movie on social media and instantly felt my stomach drop. The monster/being in this movie mad me not want to watch this movie, but somehow was convinced. It takes place in Sweden, when a group of men decide to go on a hike, but when one of them injures themselves, they decide to cut through a creepy and dark forest to get to a ski lodge quicker. This takes a drastic turn as they stumble upon an abandoned house in the middle of a rain storm and spend the night there. They each check out the house and realize that in the upstairs room, there is a human skeleton with antlers and covered in hay to look like a scarecrow. They realize what it is, and decide to only spend the night there and remain on the bottom floor. When they wake up they had wild dreams that made them all terrified. Once they leave the house, they walk outside to see a deer carcass in a tree with its, lets say innards, flayed across the trunks. Each of them shaken up, they proceed to move one. Slowly one by one, each of the men gets picked off by this creature that is hunting them, one of them even ends up like the poor deer. Eventually they stumble across a small village that is worshipping this creature, they claim it is the Norse god Loki, and that they must sacrifice people to him. Only two men are left at this point, one of them was chosen by the being and the other they sacrificed. This movie was unnerving because of the cinematography. There were many shots of just the forest but each of them twisted and turned to make the audience as disoriented as the characters were. Each shot was artistically chosen and placed in each scene perfectly to create tension with the audience. There were even times where if you looked close enough, the creature blended in with the background of the forest. you never saw the full thing until the very end, which added to the scare factor because you didn't know what you were expecting. This movie scared me for the week after that. I live in the desert and I was scared of something that resides in the forest. Whenever I saw something glowing in the dark, I thought it was the eyes of the beast. Out of my ten favorites, its definitely a top 3.

The last movie would be The Taking of Deborah Logan. I never finished this movie because I was frozen in my seat, hiding under a pillow and blankets. I refuse to finish watching it to this day. This movie is a found footage type of film. These type of films terrify me the most because you feel more connected when the camera is moving like someone is actually holding it. Whenever one of the characters talked into it, it felt like that were talking to you and drawing you in. The movie consists of this woman who owns an older home and some students who want to do a project on the home. The woman's mother, Deborah Logan, is a lovely nice old lady, until she slowly gets possessed by the demon in her basement/attic. Sorry, spoilers. As she gets more and more possessed by the demon, she begins to look and act worse. Deborah slowly loses her memory, has mysterious bruises, throws up dirt and worms, leaves in the middle of the night, and stalks people around the house. Towards the end, they send her to a hospital to have her be safe there because they realize that something is controlling her in the house. They eventually realize that the demon inside her needs to finish a ritual that it started hundreds of years ago, and he needs a child. They show security footage of Deborah escaping the hospital by slipping out of her handcuffs, literally, and steals the nearest child. The college students and woman find Deborah, but see that she is literally trying to eat the child. I will spare the details, but that is one scene I will have etched in my brain for forever. The lighting, acting, and cinematography of pulling off a terrifying found footage horror movie is astronomical. The actors were fabulous, especially the woman who played Deborah, the positioning of each shot was perfectly timed, and the sound design added to the hauntingly good movie. I remember telling my friend I would never forgive her for making me watch that movie. This movie is not my favorite because it was the scariest movie I have ever seen, but on that not, it's my number one on my top ten list. I hate the look of the poster because it brings back memories, so look it up if you dare. 

All right! You made it to the end! Were you scared? Here's some pictures of puppies if you are. I have many more movies that I could have referenced like Veronica or Midnight Man, but I didn't want to further terrify my audience. All of the movies I reference all scared me in a different type of way, and were all different types of horror. The first one was mostly gory horror, the second was monster horror, and the third was possession horror. I think I get the most scared when movies are about ghosts and demons because I personally believe in all of that stuff, but whatever floats your boat. Sorry if I scarred you for life, like I said these movies can be very terrifying if you are sensitive to death or gore. Please watch them at our own risk!