Horror Films: The Social Aspect
(originally posted 10/09/2017 on my student blog caitlinrwoods.oucreate.com)
It's October, and while it may still feel like summer here in Oklahoma I've already committed myself fully to the fall feeling. October is my favorite month. The air starts to feel crisper, pumpkin patches are open at every church with a youth group to fund, and we have the best two days of the year: my birthday, and Halloween!
Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. It's something I think I inherited from my mother, who has always been a horror fanatic as well as a fervent lawn decorator (homemade graveyard, anyone?). To me, Halloween is a very family-central holiday. As kids you go trick-or-treating with parents and siblings, you carve pumpkins together, and you stay at home eating candy, reveling in the night. Of course that's just my personal experience, and I recognize that other people probably didn't have a Halloween-loving mom like I did. But even outside of the nuclear family, Halloween is a time to engage with friends and loved ones. Kids dress up together! They talk about their costumes, planning together. Hordes of children swarm neighborhoods during Halloween, when otherwise sidewalks would be empty in this world which revolves around automobiles. It's not stressful like any other holiday, and people use this time to engage with each other unlike any other holiday. Matching costumes, much??
I could write for days about how much I love Halloween. But I want to use this an an excuse to write about something else: scary movies!
Scary movies are another aspect of that closeness I wrote about earlier. Do you watch horror movies alone? Well, if you're me and you live alone in an apartment with your dog then yes, but NORMALLY that isn't the case. You go see horror movies with friends! There's that old cliche about a couple going to see a scary movie so the girl will scream and turn to her boyfriend for comfort. Horror movies are, as a genre, meant to be social. And what better social movies to watch than the Evil Dead franchise?
The Evil Dead, for those who don't know, is a 1981 film directed by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell that spawned a cult following as well as sequels Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn, Army of Darkness, a remake in 2013, and the current series Ash vs Evil Dead.
Something I don't think I understood until a few years ago was the fact that horror movies were meant to be watched with other people. I never saw the allure of going to the theatre to watch that year's spooky flick, because I didn't really have friends who liked scary movies. By the time I was old enough to go to the movies without parents, all the pictures my friends wanted to see were "ironic". It wasn't until a few years ago when my sister moved in with me that I realized the value of horror movies as a social event. My sister and I, fans of Halloween since childhood, curated an October movie list the first year she lived with me. We picked five classic horror films we had always wanted to see, and decided on a night each week that we could sit down and watch them. After the first film we watched (which I don't remember; it was, like, three years ago) I realized that horror movies aren't meant to be watched and valued silently.
You scream together! You laugh at the goofy effects! You yell at the characters for doing something stupid! Watching a horror movie alone isn't half as fun without someone to scream with.
I first thought of The Evil Dead the year my sister and I wrote our first Halloween movie list (a tradition which lasted the two Halloween seasons we lived together). At the time, I worked in a kitchen with a kitchen manager who loved horror movies and horror comedies. I told him about my love for Halloween, and he recommended several films to me. The Evil Dead was something I had heard about after its many references and spoofs, and after seeing billboards advertising The Evil Dead: LIVE at the local performing arts center, and I added it to our Halloween list. It was a hit.
My sister and I love the Evil Dead franchise. The cheap, budget effects of the first one were so unique; a style that was only further perfected with Dead By Dawn, a revisionist sequel which adds a new element of motivation for the characters (and the possibility for another sequel, which happens 4 years later; 11 years after the original film). We love the crazy makeup and wild dolly shots (a style I later learned is very characteristic of Raimi), and we especially love Bruce Campbell's acting.
My sister has, honestly, been sending me photos of Bruce Campbell all week. It never stops. And why are we so nuts for this goofy-ass film?? Because it's FUN to watch with other people! It takes those elements of horror film that makes it such a social genre and stretches it to its fullest. The dancing furniture scene in Dead By Dawn? HILARIOUS! But I wouldn't laugh half as hard if I weren't watching it with other people, for the same reason I didn't turn the TV off when watching Army of Darkness at... frankly, any part of that movie. They're fun. Horror movies are so much more enjoyable with other people, and that's one of the reasons I love Halloween so much. It gives us a reason to sit at home and rent a movie and invite people over. It gives us an excuse to hold a party where we just drink and eat candy. No other holiday gives us the freedom that Halloween does, and I love it for that. I love the excuse to shout at the TV for 90 minutes while I drink boxed wine and eat takeout and candy.