My inspiration for this horror psychology post came because I went to see The Conjuring opening weekend. I was very impressed. With this blog I really haven’t done movie reviews in the normal sense and I am not going to start now, but there is a reason that it is now the 10th most grossing horror movie of all time and just knocked The Haunting down to 11th place, and moved into my top 3. The simple reason to this was 1 practical effects, they win over CGI every time, and 2 great story telling. Any way that is neither here nor there as far as what this post is about. I will write my usual analysis of the movie later. What this post is about is the tagline on this movie.
I have never really thought twice about the little phrases like this one that appear on movies.Sure, when I see it I usually go look up to see just how much the movie has fictionalized, but I am never expecting to find something earth-shattering (I think I was jaded though after Mothman Prophecies, yeah the bridge really did fall, but the Mothman had not been seen in decades. Lame! ) Anyway, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine on Facebook about the movie and why she was really nervous to go see it. We had a very interesting conversation, but what was most interesting was the fact that part of what really scared her was the tag line. As she explained it, horror movies don’t bother her all that much except when they say they are based on true story. The reason being is that with all the others she can always tell herself that it is just a fantasy, but when they say they are true it becomes something different. Dread enters the picture. Dread of the idea that if even only some of the things she sees happened to real people then some of it could really happen to her.
This idea stuck with me ,I think often when we engage in horror we knowingly enter a darker realm.A lot of the time though the sheer exaggeration of it all helps us to understand that this hyper exposure is not real. But what happens when it does become real? This is a fascinating area of horror psychology. What is going on inside a person when the things you always took for fantasy transgress or even violently tear their way into ones reality? How does one deal with that, is it as simple as the kind of re-configuring that goes one when one experiences existential dread that happen much more subtly in the presence of “art-horror”? Personally I think it would be a lot more traumatic, having seen people experience this, such as when my brother freaked out when on a daytime-recon of an area I was going to be investigating for a haunting, and we heard disembodied voices. It raises a question within myself, why didn’t I freak out? That experience was definitely a first for me as well, but it did not have the marked effect that it had on my brother. I think I have stumbled upon one my new horror psychology topics, good thing too as I now have a dissertation topic to start thinking about.
What are your thoughts? Have you ever had an experience where fantasy has transgressed into reality? What happened and how did you handle it? What about the tag lines like “Based on a true story”, does that cause you to have different emotions or thoughts about the story? And as always question are welcome.
Horror Struck 