I'm deathly afraid of scary movies. It's a fact that most of my family and friends are aware of. And I don't just mean a little afraid like I just don't want to watch scary movies. I mean I can't even be in the same room when someone is watching a movie that seems a little creepy to me. I even screamed when I saw the shark from Finding Nemo pop up on screen, when I was younger, which is just sad. Since I know that this fear is not good for me, I have made the decision to try and conquer my fears. I know that I will probably never be able to get to the point where I can comfortably sit down and watch a horror movie in the middle of the night, but I would like to get over my fear enough to not jump at every little thing in thrillers and regular movies.
After I made this decision, which was a recent occurrence, I started off slow. When my roommate was watching some random scary movie on her laptop, I didn't ask her to use headphones. Even though I wasn't watching the movie, I could hear it, and hearing the dialogue and the score without the visuals really took the edge off and I wasn't scared. For movies, everything adds to the finished product so taking the visual away from the audio meant that it wasn't as scary as it was meant to be with both aspects.
The next thing that I attempted, which wasn't really voluntary because I had to watch these movies for class, was to actually sit down and watch gory action movies. I don't really like action movies, except for Marvel movies, because in action there can be gore and a lot of jump scares which I am terrified of. For my film class, we had to watch Saving Private Ryan and Pulp Fiction. It took me a really long time to watch these movies, including the time it took me to convince myself that I had to do it for class. I don't like avoiding doing homework, so I managed to convince myself. It was painful and gory but I am proud of myself for getting through them. One of the beginning scenes of Saving Private Ryan, when the soldiers arrived on the beach to fight was especially difficult to watch because there was so much blood and gore, in my opinion.
The last thing I tried were a few Tim Burton movies. Now personally I admit Tim Burton makes great movies but there are just not my cup of tea. Everything has that creepy and dark element to it. My friends tried to make me watch Sweeney Todd freshman year and it was a disaster which ended with me closing my eyes and blocking my ears for the whole movie. In order to conquer my fear though I decided to join in when a couple of my friends decided to watch the Corpse Bride and the Nightmare Before Christmas movies. I actually ended up loving the movies. I loved the romance in Corpse Bride even though I was upset with who Victor ended up with, and I loved the songs in Nightmare Before Christmas, which I am attempting to learn the lyrics to. The movies did creep me out a little bit at the beginning even though it wasn't live-action but I loved them anyway.
I'm going to continue on my journey to try and conquer my fear and I believe that one day I will get there.
