The Horror!

As far back as I can remember I’ve loved being scared. Movies like Monster Squad and the “Thriller” music video were watched on repeat. I even had a view finder with stills from “Thriller”, and pictures of me, happy as a clam, with Frankenstein’s monster at Universal Studios. Where did this love of horror come from? I really can’t answer that, but it is definitely ingrained in me.

For my creative writing classes in grade school, I would typically write haunted house stories, gory illustrations and all – I still have them! There were two projects we had to bring in to class while studying poetry… One I read to the class – in full – was “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe. I don’t think that poem has ever felt as long as when read by a second-grader. The other time, we had to perform for the class with a partner. I convinced my then-crush and partner to do the poem “The Ghoul” from Nightmares, a scary poem book for kids. The poem talks about a ghoul waiting outside a school to snatch the children up and eat them. I’m not joking. During a part in the poem that talks about the ghoul eating fingers, we passed out circus peanuts made to look like thumbs to our classmates. I’m not sure whether my teacher called my parents about that one…

I would always look for monster books in stores or the library, I loved the Disney Halloween special (I still own a VHS copy), I read the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series (still have those, too), I saw Scream in theaters 9 times, and I loved helping my mom study for her Urban Legends college course (I kept her workbook). Halloween (no surprise) is my favorite holiday. In school, I was always the one that held a costume party for my friends, complete with “spooky” treats. We even rented out a hall one time for it. My mom would say we have to “dress up” for dinner, meaning pick a costume out of one of the many bins we have. I even remember my high school boyfriend’s family having to dress up in costume!

After taking courses like Horror Writing in high school, and the History of Violence in Cinema and Horror Films in college, I’d say my love of the macabre has stuck with me. Currently, I love watching horror films, even if they’re pretty low-brow or cheap, I will go to any haunted house experience that my friends will agree to, I read a ton of Stephen King, and I have written and acted in several horror shorts.

I’m not sure what it is about horror that draws me in, but I’ll take a stab (wink, wink) at it. What’s funny is that I don’t get scared easily, but watching scary movies provides a sense of catharsis. The building suspense and the ultimate release after the scare. That rollercoaster of adrenaline. Not to mention, many horror movies are SO over the top they turn campy, which is just fun. I know they're not real and can distance myself from them, so I don't internalize anything. Only a handful of movies have stuck around longer than the five minutes directly after watching them. Movies like The Strangers or Saw tend to affect me more because they're humans tormenting other humans. Movies with a supernatural element don't tend to last with me, unless they have that uncanny valley factor of fast-moving people, like Jacob's Ladder. That gets under my skin something awful.

I know why I want to act IN horror movies. Because everything in a horror movie is pretty much life-and-death, the stakes are super high. The emotions are drastic. I get to be in a world that I (hopefully) will never experience in real life. I get to access emotional parts of me that are typically hidden away or useless in everyday life. Horror movies offer a chance to access those emotions and let them out. It's cathartic. It can be fun to get messy or “bloody” and scream your head off. And the best part is that it's not hurting anyone. The beauty of acting, in my opinion, is experience, living a different life for a little while. Horror just kicks that up a notch. Bring it!

Acting in A Tool for Cutting