What if they made actual horror movies? Not the tactile, creature in the dark kind or the evil is coming to get you kind, but ones with real horror in them. Movies where we agreed to stop avoiding the truth and confronted it. Movies where we actively pursued our dreams without the Rocky music in the background, without being the underdog, without moral dilemma or overwhelming odds. Movies with no monster in the closet, nothing chasing us or forcing us into decisions we wouldn’t have made otherwise…movies where we make the choices of our own free will and deal with the consequences.
I imagine a movie like that looking something like a kid out on the playground terrified and sobbing and crouched down trying to hide while everyone else looks on with empathy and love and support, where the sun is shining and a slight breeze is blowing, and no matter what anybody does, the person doesn’t accept any help or support, refuses to realize that there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing that is hurting them or threatening them, nothing around them that is wrong at all. The only thing that is causing them pain and distress is themselves. Or a man who has lived his whole life in hiding, pretending to me something he’s not, like a lawyer in an amazing suit carrying a briefcase, and finding one day, in the center of his desk in his posh office, the one thing that he has always feared, the object that represents who he really is and has dreamed all his life. And it’s like a box or a ball with a note on it saying “Open me and your dreams will come true.” Which he immediately drops as if it’s radioactive and starts screaming, then runs away and never stops running.
So many people work extremely hard to keep their dreams, their true nature, the best self as far away from their lives as possible. They hold it off as “someday” or “maybe if I’m lucky” or “when all of this is done.” They relegate it to some other mystical universe of unreality because to let it come near is terrifying. It means change, not just in their physical situation such as living space and relationships, but inside. It means who they are inside changes. It means they are no longer the person they knew and who they will become is unknown and scary and not to be contemplated. Better to watch reality tv than to step towards what could be.
But what if…what if they made horror movies like that? Would they become like horror movies are today? Entertainment? Would we get over being scared of who we truly are and start to make fun of our fears?