Senior Sarah Keely pulls her sweater above her nose, slightly below her wide, unblinking eyes. Her hair hoods her ears, but it’s the silence that petrifies her the most. She places her hands delicately on her face, ready at a moment’s notice to shield her eyes. She’s in a fetal position; the attack is coming.

Suddenly, it’s anarchy.

Violins screech in terrible tune, and the closet door slams shut. Demonic eyes consume the little girl in the movie screen as she drops her teddy bear; Keely winces. The film is “Poltergeist” (1982). At 12 years old, it was the first horror movie she ever watched. Since then, she said she’s seen it countless times.

Keely said most horror films are illogical and terrifying, but that’s why she loves them. In fact the horror film industry raked in $733 million in tickets sales in 2017, according to the website Box Office Mojo. A proud contributor to the market, Keely watches multiple horror movies every month and said the pictures are why October “is so great.” Just recently, she viewed “The Babadook” (2014), an Australian thriller about a frightening picture book, with her friends.

“Whenever [the Babadook is] coming to your room, he’ll make a rumble and then he’ll knock three times, and then he’ll come out. And so you’re watching the movie, and then you’ll hear the rumble, and then you’re like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, it’s coming,’” Keely said. “You’re grabbing onto your friend, and it’s so much fun.”

Keely described herself as easily scared; however, she said that fact only heightens the thrill of the experience. Still, Keely said she never watches horror films without others, crediting her entertainment to the giggly conversations during and after the movies.

“It’s fun to be scared, but the best part is afterwards when you’re talking to whoever you watched it with, and you’re like, ‘What just happened?’” Keely said. “You’re trying to figure out [what happened], and you’re making jokes about it.”

What Keely finds amusing, however, junior Mohammed Abu-Salah finds idiotic and purposeless. Watching “It” (2017), a mystery and thriller film starring a clown, and reluctantly sitting through horror commercials solidified his stance because of how contradictory or incomplete he said the plot is.

“It’s not the scary part; I can deal with the scary part,” Abu-Salah said, “but it’s just sitting through the weirdest stuff possible. Like every weird thing that could possibly happen happens, and then you wait to get scared, and then after you get scared, that’s it.”

While Keely acknowledges the impracticality of horror films, she said it’s only possible to enjoy the picture when one doesn’t take it too seriously. Because of her “low attention span,” Keely said she cares for the excitement and adrenaline of horror, not the monotony of a drama.

“I hate watching movies, but I love watching horror movies because I’m into it the whole time,” Keely said, “but you look at the Rotten Tomatoes [score], and it’s like a 20 percent, but I watch it, and I’m like, ‘Yes, that was the best movie I’ve ever seen.’ Like, the plot was terrible, but it was really scary.”

Keely also said sometimes the foolishness of a character enlivens the experience as she can joke about it.
“You cannot end a horror movie without hating one of the characters,” Keely said. “Like the mom in the ‘Shining,’ [based on a Stephen King novel,] you watch it, and then you’re like, ‘Are you stupid?’”

While sophomore Elizabeth Sherwin has never finished a full horror film, she said she avoids them because they are “just too much.” Despite relishing the thrill of a roller coaster, she described adrenaline as different than what she experiences when watching horror. While the rides elicit “movement” and “a feeling in her stomach,” horror makes her feel “threatened and really scared.”

“My friends always try to convince me to go see [horror movies], and I think we started watching half of one back in seventh grade. I couldn’t even make it through it,” Sherwin said. “I was like, ‘Turn it off.’ I couldn’t even deal with it, and then we watched some comedy or something.”

“We think that inevitably [pop culture is] one thing that can tie you together with a number of age groups, with a number of different diverse ethnic groups. It’s kind of that thing that when you’re in the real world, that’s what you talk about,” Blackburn said. “People want to know what you’re listening to, what you’re watching.” 

Sophomore Luke Stagg has taken a love of movies to the next level, making it his passion, as he spends most of his free time watching and analyzing films. He finds beauty in the various genres and, ever since fifth grade, has started writing his own screen plays. Eventually he aspires to be a professional screenwriter. 

Stagg said he especially admires horror directors as they must evoke the strongest emotions from their viewers. In the words of Sir Authur Doyle, who created Sherlock Holmes, “Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.”

“Personally I love an effective horror movie. It shows just how powerful the medium of filmmaking is,” Stagg said. “The feelings that you feel while watching them aren’t fake, and the filmmakers know that. They’ve spent months and months trying to craft the perfectly scary scene, and when it works, I get really happy. It just encourages me to keep writing and working hard to become a filmmaker myself one day.”

Blackburn said the modern day conversation is centered on the media one consumes. He said movies make for easy small talk and can build strong relationships as well. Whenever Keely and her friends are bored, they resort to a horror film. While Abu-Salah and Sherwin dislike such movies, Abu-Salah said he enjoys action while Sherwin dabbles in all but horror genres, depending on her mood.

While they may not be invested in the process as much as Stagg, movies provide an opportunity to escape from a regular Tuesday evening to anything from a creepy cemetery to a dysfunctional but loving family.
“It’s just fun to get hyped up because then afterwards, you’re walking out of the movie theater and your friends are stumbling around you like, ‘Oh, my God. What just happened,’” Keely said. “It’s so funny, and then you’re slap happy for like an hour.”

What is your favorite horror film? Let us know in the comments below.