As a kid I was never a person who watched scary things on TV. I didn't watch Goosebumps (1995-1998), I didn't watch the Haunted Mansion (2003), and I didn't even watch Monster House (2006). I never really enjoyed being scared and especially did not like the supernatural. In my Junior year of high school however I watched my first ever "scary movie" which was Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). As non-scary as that was, it was really my first step into the Slasher Genre. I was fascinated by the idea of a regular person going mad and enjoyed the fact that these people (usually men) could be defeated by simplify outsmarting them. I have never been the type of person to watch supernatural movies like The Ring (2002) or Paranormal Activity (2007) because I don't like the idea of something I couldn't control taking power or fighting something that I couldn't explain. My some of my roommates last year loved supernatural movies and I could not handle them. I watched them but was freaking out the whole time.
I like movies where I know exactly what is happening at that time. I know the killer is usually the boyfriend, the "good guy" or someone in the family. It's not hard to predict that the people having sex in the woods are going to die first and there is always a "survivor girl". Movies like the Scream franchise (1996, 1997, 2000 and 2011) and its spin-offs like Scream Queens (2015-2016), and Scream the MTV show (2015-2016) are not only shows I can handle but shows I enjoy. I also love the Scary Movie series (2000, 2001, 2003, 2006, and 2013) because it makes fun of all of the things that would normally scare me. I also love movies that are old because they are no longer scary to today's standard. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Nosferatu (1922), Night of the Living Dead (1968) and even movies a bit more modern like Jaws (1975) were deemed scary and creepy in their time but really aren't too today's standard. I appreciate them because of the effects used to attempt to make it scary and many of them achieved it. What is your take on scary movies? Which kind is your favorite?
