Point-counterpoint: Spooky Movies

Halloween is just around the corner. The haunted holiday has a handful of fun traditions. 

Every person has a different way to celebrate, but one of the biggest and most exciting is watching scary movies. 

As a people, we have an inherent desire to feel thrills, whether it’s death-defying skydives out of a plane or a rollercoaster, we want to feel that excitement. One way to feel that is to watch scary flicks. Nothing gets you going more than a slasher with the lights off. 

Scary movies have been around for years. In fact, the first motion picture is considered a horror film. It was an eight-second clip of a train rounding a corner towards the camera. The audience was so terrified, the clip was banned from a few of the fairs and carnivals it was supposed to be shown at. 

With that in mind, imagine how successful that feeling of fear and anxiety must have been for cinema to continue and grow into the giant-media platform it is today.  Horror is the godfather of modern entertainment. 

 Not everyone enjoys being frozen by fear in a crowded theater, but horror branches into several sub-genres that reaches all audiences. Some movies are made to absolutely terrify audiences to the point they are scared to leave the theater, but there’s also movies that are more story driven with more spaced out scares to allow and audience to feel scared without needing security to escort them out of the theater. There’s also gory-stories that are all about blood and guts, but that’s a niche audience. 

The scary movie genre has also spawned into full blown experiences during the Halloween season. Haunted houses, haunted mazes, themed amusement park attractions and full-blown horror conventions. What’s more Halloween than all of that? Utah’s biggest amusement park Lagoon hosts its Frightmates event the entire month of October, inviting guests to re-experience the park with a scary twist. 

        If you need more proof that scary movies are THE Halloween staple, take the amount of films based around the holiday into consideration. The king of Halloween, Michael Myers, has 11 films under his belt, all with the name Halloween right in the title. The “All Hallows Eve” series contains four films that take place on Halloween. Even some of the biggest paranormal movies have a Halloween date, “The Exorcist” is a Halloween classic. Even in 2019, “Scary Stories to tell in the dark” revolves around the thirty-first of October.   

        With all of that evidence, it seems the horror genre earned a place among the Halloween festivities. If watching a spooky flick isn’t on your agenda this year, put aside a few hours and get your thrills and your kills from a film classic. Scare safely out there. Happy Halloween.