Halloween! Woo! Who doesn't love this time of year, besides those for whom October carries some sort of horrible connotation? Apple picking! Pumpkin stuff! Sweater weather - just nicked my turtleneck from the attack - and not sweating miserably everywhere you go! The smell of fireplaces wafting around neighborhoods, a hickory draft suggesting a world before winter! I'll probably write more about it for my next passage next week, so cheers.

And the frightening.

Yes, the frightening! Trees crooked under the moonlight like spirally arms of death waiting to snatch you on your stroll home. Scarecrows and ghouls plastered everywhere, harbingers of doom! Too scenic of a red and gold pathway stretching into the woods; who knows how far you'll wander down before it gets too quiet and you've lost your way? Mwahaha! My favorite time of year! Oh, and horror movies.

I think we love horror movies because it makes us feel vulnerable. And I don't mean jump scares. Stupid jump scares. I mean in the sense that it's quite thrilling to be aesthetically afraid (I'm not talking about real life horror, which will vary from person to person), to be thrust into an unknown world with unknown frights. It can just barely touch you - but not fully. The thrills of the action genre are one thing, but the frights of horror much more drastically pull you in, and I believe that's what's given the genre such widespread consumption. We venture into Black Mirror to tantalize ourselves with a vision of a worst possible outcome, a technologically creepy future - and we come back for the rush. We let Freddy Krueger torment us on the screen before we sleep and he follows us there - because there's a thrill rush like no other.

So now that I'm done surmising why we all love horror, what makes a good horror movie? What makes a film not only viscerally scary, but frightening in ways beyond a loss of breath?

In the lab of my creative mind, built off personal gullibility and a desperation to validate tuition spent cultivating imagination - lol - I've come up with three key components to what makes horror tick!

The externalization of real-life fears. You know why I never found Jason scary, despite an admittedly well-made design? He's a killer just out to kill. Which is terrifying in real life, but when there's no symbol to the wielder of the knife, we are totally safe behind the screen.

I just finished watching Gerald's Game. None of the antagonists in that film are outwardly evil or menacing, but you know what? They were all incarnations of various masculine insecurity that's traumatized our lead beyond belief. And when such an evil that plagues so many in real life is brought to its most primal, nightmarish incarnation, hairs stand on end. Because we are forced to confront that which others face and we do not. It's almost poignant in its uniting - maybe more folks should watch horror movies like that. Hell, who didn't wince and cringe and gasp when that cop car showed up at the end of Get Out? A good horror movie can inform, more than anything. Jump scares last a moment, but facing something you know exists, that you never had to? That'll last a lifetime, hopefully. That'll stick with you.

And good. The truth IS terrifying in its capacity to throw us into the viewpoints of those who walk out of their house scared every day. Sticking food for thought alongside terror? What better way to compliment both? The thoughtfulness makes the terror real, the terror empathizes with the victims - and thankfully, gives them a triumph in most scenarios. So if you can, miss the tried and true scary doll of Annabelle. Go for the crippling, stalking specter of depression in TheBabadook. Because you'll come out a thousand times more shaking, and a thousand times more informed. You know that adrenaline rush I mentioned? This will add to it.

The removal of normalcy, the uncanny, the corruption of the real. Not the removal of the real and the dive into the fantastical. No, no, I'm talking that one thing being slightly off when it shouldn't be. This is why David Lynch movies and shows - which aren't strictly horror - give nightmares far past their viewing date.

If you've seen Twin Peaks (I haven't, and I'm mad at myself for it), you'll see the tiniest elements of everyday life just slightly warped into something unnatural and wrong, against its normal function. I find stop motion from the 20s and 30s motherfucking spooktacular. It's not perfect; it's glitchy, it's trying to be adorable and sing-song...but it's so off that you want nothing but for it to stop. Just stop!

We're always on the hunt for monsters, for ghouls lurking in the dark. So when something free of that traditionally scary imagery-- such as a line of neighbors waving in unison when that doesn't make sense-- sticks up, we jump back even further. This is safety, routine - it's not supposed to be this way! When Nancy and her friends have conquered Freddy (you know what Freddy I mean) at last, and they drive away, her car is covered in his trademark red and green stripes. Jesus! The sun is shining, our friends are here - why are we not safe?

A monster lunging for you isn't scary. It's spooky iconography. But if you saw a young child on an idyllic suburban lawn darting back and forth, yelling out some mantra in an undecipherable tongue - that's a scene of safety where those demons aren't supposed to touch you. The daylight - we're supposed to be safe. I can relate an easy situation: don't dreams, whatever they tend to be, freak you out? You feel awake, real, and living - but the people and friends you see in your dreams aren't. They're warped imitations.

Glitchy video games, so to speak. Yeah, you're walking down the street like you do every day, but why is everything quiet? Why is that dog just standing still? Weren't you just laughing with the dream version of your acquaintances not too long ago? Why's everything feel like it's about to cave in?

Third and final is....

The inability to process the unknown and the truth.I mean, doesn't this freak you out every day? The fact that there are some concepts that you will never truly understand? Or worse - things we should have never been made to process? At least if you face a symbol of darkness, you can pinpoint - but what if there are forces we are not accustomed to, not a distortion of what we know...they're so beyond our grip that we don't even understand? What if you were gallivanting one day in an ancient landscape, when all of a sudden, you found...something you can't describe?

We don't have to embark on that journey. It's impossible for most of us. But when we see people do - when we watch someone sacrifice their insanity to calm their curiosity - oh, that's not just earthly scary. That's cosmically scary. When you think of the dark that lies beyond our planet, our findings, what we know - that's what's there. And if we can't handle the magnificence, then it'll overwhelm us. Like...what's in a black hole? Is it the door to another galaxy...or true nothingness? Whoa, Nelly.

I think this aspect of horror is so little represented on film because it's just too damn scary and disturbing. H.P Lovecraft novellas tended to end with a protagonist going insane after discovering a secret or witnessing a phenomenon so outside the range of thought that they could not process it. This horror is the older cousin of real-life externalization - because it symbolizes what we have not yet understood. If those fears were of the sort we know and try to process, these will be the fears to be understood if we move to the next step of life.

But there's a flip side. Not just what lies ahead or signifies a deep dive into the unknown, but what was already there. A secret so terrible it would uproot you whole.

There's a movie called Incendies, not even horror (a damn good mystery thriller), but its plot involves two young children finding out such a horrible truth about their lives that rediscovering it drove their mother into catatonia. Can you imagine? If your entire life was uprooted by one crack in the ice, that spilled its darkness onto your doorstep? And you could never run. You could never hide from it. You found that truth. It doesn't matter if it's a family lie or stumbling upon an alien finding that cracked your mind with its immensity. Either way, you couldn't process it. It overwhelmed you. You lost. That's frightening. Societal truths like the ones we discussed are one thing - magnify that times a thousand, encompassing everyone.

Anyway, I gotta go. There's some old lady in the corner of my room holding a younger version of myself and I think she wants to talk to me. Happy Halloween, my friends. See you in the dark!