Aaahhhh!!! SCARYYYYYY!
Apr. 1st, 2003 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlock::sitting staring at comp monitor, glad to death there's no tv in her room, and imagining creepy girl stalking up to strangle from behind her desk chair::
Watched The Ring tonight. I discovered something about myself and horror films.
See, I can take all the creepy sounds and screams and psycho-slashers that you can throw at me. Once the experience is over and the credita are rolling, I won't blink an eye. Scream scary and jumpy and funny, but not something to keep you up at night.
Ghost stories do it to me. Specifically, poltergeist/demon-spirit type stories, like The Ring.
Why? Imagery. I'm an extremely visual person-- I'm artistic, and I'm always sensitive to the design and look of things around me, or things I see. I admire interesting rocks, pretty-shaped leaves, neat angles in architecture, a well-designed movie poster or restaurant menu.
This movie was chock full of scary/disturbing imagery. The killer video tape was designed almost as if someone had looked into Rashaka's brain, picked out the exact sequence of images that would make her freak, and put them together. And then built a horror movie around it.
The scariest thing to me? The cabin. God, that was awful. Sitting there, at th bottom of a hill, backed by shaggy trees...I think I must have told my parents at least 4 times throughout the movie that it was the ugliest more horrible looking place I'd ever seen and I'd sleep in the car before you'd get me to spend the night in a cabin like that.
Then...the girl walking toward the screen, and then crawling from the tv. That one will stay with me.
Also, the mirrors. Mirrors freak me out. Ghost-people behind you in mirrors freak me out.
And the faces in the photos. The faces really, really bothered me. I mean, they were small potatoes as far as horrorific images in the film, but they really really bothered me.
The film as a whole?
I think the whole thing was just... highly disturbing and the little girl was awful. So the dad kept her locked away? So the psycho mother killed her? It seemed they were right to. She was making the island bad, she was making her mother crazy, she was making the horses psycho, and after death she was killing even more people.
Morals of the Movie:
1. Some malevolent spirits are bad because they are bad. You can't help them, you can't put them to rest because they don't want rest or freedom or to be understood, they want to hurt everyone. And they'll use you to make that possible.
2. Always make sure that if you're going to ask your nearby requisite psychic child for advice, you get the whole story before you charge off to act.
3. Crazy horses are dangerous and a death-mask is awful to look at.
4. Rashaka shouldn't want stuff with scary imagery before going to sleep.
5. And of course, the horror movie rule of all rules: Just when you think it's over, it's not.
Watched The Ring tonight. I discovered something about myself and horror films.
See, I can take all the creepy sounds and screams and psycho-slashers that you can throw at me. Once the experience is over and the credita are rolling, I won't blink an eye. Scream scary and jumpy and funny, but not something to keep you up at night.
Ghost stories do it to me. Specifically, poltergeist/demon-spirit type stories, like The Ring.
Why? Imagery. I'm an extremely visual person-- I'm artistic, and I'm always sensitive to the design and look of things around me, or things I see. I admire interesting rocks, pretty-shaped leaves, neat angles in architecture, a well-designed movie poster or restaurant menu.
This movie was chock full of scary/disturbing imagery. The killer video tape was designed almost as if someone had looked into Rashaka's brain, picked out the exact sequence of images that would make her freak, and put them together. And then built a horror movie around it.
The scariest thing to me? The cabin. God, that was awful. Sitting there, at th bottom of a hill, backed by shaggy trees...I think I must have told my parents at least 4 times throughout the movie that it was the ugliest more horrible looking place I'd ever seen and I'd sleep in the car before you'd get me to spend the night in a cabin like that.
Then...the girl walking toward the screen, and then crawling from the tv. That one will stay with me.
Also, the mirrors. Mirrors freak me out. Ghost-people behind you in mirrors freak me out.
And the faces in the photos. The faces really, really bothered me. I mean, they were small potatoes as far as horrorific images in the film, but they really really bothered me.
The film as a whole?
I think the whole thing was just... highly disturbing and the little girl was awful. So the dad kept her locked away? So the psycho mother killed her? It seemed they were right to. She was making the island bad, she was making her mother crazy, she was making the horses psycho, and after death she was killing even more people.
Morals of the Movie:
1. Some malevolent spirits are bad because they are bad. You can't help them, you can't put them to rest because they don't want rest or freedom or to be understood, they want to hurt everyone. And they'll use you to make that possible.
2. Always make sure that if you're going to ask your nearby requisite psychic child for advice, you get the whole story before you charge off to act.
3. Crazy horses are dangerous and a death-mask is awful to look at.
4. Rashaka shouldn't want stuff with scary imagery before going to sleep.
5. And of course, the horror movie rule of all rules: Just when you think it's over, it's not.
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-02 12:00 am (UTC)Oh yeah, she also can get you without a TV in the room... ^______^
no subject
Date: 2003-04-02 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-02 10:55 am (UTC)Exactly. Monster movies, slasher flicks...I jump a little, but after that, big whatever. A good ghost story, though? Can creep me out for weeks - years, even. I remember that the part of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow that freaked me out was not the headless horseman, but the story told at the party about the Woman in White. (Just typing the words "Woman in White," even now, makes me look around nervously.) She was a woman who got caught out in a storm and froze to death, and now haunts "Raven's Rock" or whatever. And that scares me. Because I've been to places like Raven's Rock and felt like I felt something. Ghosts seem much more real to me than ghouls, etc. Also, ghosts and the like are a more psychological fear, and that stuff always trips me up.
Whoa, tangent. Sorry about that. So yeah, The Ring. That one got me, too.
Re:
Date: 2003-04-02 11:04 am (UTC)yeha... tangent. Ring scary, Spike pretty.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-02 11:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-02 11:06 am (UTC)But The Ring didn't get me. I think because a television/vcr is part of it... in my mind these additions to the mythos or whatever make it more scif than ghost.
There you have it.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-02 11:11 am (UTC)Ring scary, Spike pretty.
I'll happily stick with that. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2003-04-02 11:36 am (UTC)Ghost stories do it to me. Specifically, poltergeist/demon-spirit type stories, like The Ring.
Me too, dude. The Ring freaked me the fuck out. Just reading your review is making me all shivery and uneasy again, and I saw the movie months ago. And it doesn't help that it's just now turning rainy and gloomy outside when it was sunny a few minutes ago. Cree-pee.
I actually covered my eyes at the end, when the girl crawled out of the TV, and I never, never do that. I was peeking through my fingers the whole time she was killing that guy, because I just knew any second she was gonna come right up to the screen and part her hair and that her face would be horrific, and I did NOT want to see it. I'm sure whatever I imagined was worse than the reality, but that's a mjaor part of what makes the movie so damn scary in the first place.
If you like the creepy imagery, read Clockwork by Philip Pullman. It's a children's book, and I read it sitting in my living in the middle of the day, and it disturbed me in the best of ways. Philip Pullman is a fucking genius.
Re:
Date: 2003-04-03 05:55 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-04-03 07:12 pm (UTC)