Editorials featured in the Forum section are solely the opinions of their individual authors.
My Pittsburgh summer days were punctuated nightly by a bag of popcorn, a can of Razz-Cran LaCroix, and a horror flick pulled from the shelves of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. I would always reach for scary movies because there is no better feeling than talking to a screen and trying to tell people who can’t hear you and don’t exist what they need to do to survive. Because the summer is a popular time for Carnegie Mellon students to be anywhere but Pittsburgh, these viewing experiences were solitary. Lonely summer nights aside, getting to sit down on the couch, hitting play on the DVD player, and constantly glancing at the window to make sure there wasn’t a monster on the other side watching and waiting to get me made me realize something. There is a right and a wrong way to watch horror movies.
Horror was a film genre that snuck up on me. Today, I unapologetically use horror as an umbrella term for any movie that is freaky or spooky. Psychological thriller and slasher films are subsets of the horror genre as a whole. At the end of the day if the events of the movie happened to me and I would want to run for my life, it’s a horror movie. Growing up, even the glimpse of a horror trailer was enough to freak me out. With the advertisements that would play before the Minecraft Youtube videos I would watch, it was always a game of roulette whether or not I would end up watching a trailer for “Child Killer 2: The Return of The Devil” or an Old Navy ad. Horror was definitely not for me.
In recent years I have grown to deeply appreciate sharing these horror movies with my friends. For example, “Hereditary” is a movie I will show my friends with every opportunity I get. Is it a fine movie to watch alone? Sure. But to experience a horror movie in isolation is a disservice to the genre of horror and its roots in popular culture. In the early stages of horror, screenings were mainly held in drive-in and movie theaters. These screenings were the perfect venue to hang out with your gang or try to get to third base with your girlfriend. Horror gets the heart racing so, date night or not, you were sure to get a thrill, and you could always count on the fact that the audience around you was right there with you — experiencing the same jumpscares and fearing the same monsters.
The rise in home-entertainment-systems in the 1980s brought another shift. With VHS and video-rental shops, people weren’t restricted to what was screening at theaters and drive-ins when they wanted to watch a movie. Distribution had expanded beyond the theatrical release and films that performed poorly in the box-office often found a second life in these home screenings. Despite being one of the most popular film genres, horror remains disreputable and is a genre continually snubbed by critics. (Think back to “Hereditary,” which was in my opinion, the Oscar snub of the century.) Audiences of horror films regularly watch them just to make fun of them. This is how many horror movies like “Killer Klowns From Outer Space” and “The Re-Animator” cement themselves as cult-classics and gain their followings.
Today distribution has become so streamlined that many movies will bypass the theatrical release in favor of direct to streaming releases. I will start out by saying, “yayyyy…” It is a good thing that more people are able to create and make art. But sometimes the “art” in question is complete dog shit. Cough cough… “Zombeavers”… Cough cough… As films have become more readily available and the genre has become oversaturated with movies you really shouldn’t waste your time watching, the movie-viewing experience has become extremely isolated. It’s not as common to grab a few friends and catch a screening at a theater or to host a movie night to screen a movie you rented or wanted to share with your friends.
Horror films are meant to be watched with other people. Streaming and current distribution practices do absolutely nothing for the genre. The cliche way to watch a romantic comedy film is crying with a tub of Ben and Jerrys. It’s a very isolated viewing experience. When you watch a horror movie, the experience should be more than just what you are seeing on screen. You are meant to giggle with your friends over the corny special effects.
Over the summer I was able to attend a Row House Cinema Cult-o-Rama screening of “Tammy and The T-Rex” and “The Re-Animator.” The best thing about the experience was that the audience played such an active role in the movie-going experience. Of course, it would be difficult to organize a crowd of enthusiastic, wasted, aging hipsters every time you wanted to take time to watch a cult-classic movie, but the general takeaway is that horror is better because of the people you watch it with. Who would want to experience the absolute insanity of “The Evil Dead” in isolation? That is the sort of movie you want to watch with witnesses. What is a screening of “Black Christmas” without friends to help you guess who is making all of those phone calls?
The genre of horror is so driven by the communal aspect of watching and experiencing a movie, whether it be with an audience of your peers or complete strangers. Here arises the issue with horror films today: with streaming and the decline of movie theaters you are more likely than not to watch movies alone. What is the solution? I wish I knew. The issue of people watching horror movies in isolation isn’t the most pressing matter of our time. We have the global warming crisis, J.D. Vance impregnating couches, lanternflies, and students wearing those hideous frog-stepper contraptions around the Tepper Quad. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. There are more important things. But if you are going to take the time to engage in the ritual of watching a movie, consider the way that communal viewing experiences can get you the most from your movie watching experience. Next time you watch “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” make sure to grab your friends, a bag of popcorn, and treat the screening with the dorky sacredness that horror demands.
Leave a Reply