horror

There's a new TV channel on directv called Chiller. Old horror stories such as Hitchcock, night gallery, friday the 13th series. Fun. it's great. i love scary stuff.

I'm a horror lover because I feel horror and supernatural stories are much better at showing reality than those mainstream novels (Christians or otherwise) that never show the spiritual stuff going on. For instance, we all could look at political issues but if we could see demons, would we see demons pushing both christians and non-christians into sin? Would we see lust being placed in the heart of New Gingrich? Or demonic lustful thoughts growing and being fed inside the minds and souls of all those adulterous Conservative pundits and politicians who tossed off their wives? But I digress.

I like a lotta horror but I don't like splatter and gore and things that are basically bloodlust. The Bible tells us "woe to him who runs to shed blood!" And yes, my reading of it might be a bit odd but I read the verse not only as "Woe to him who actually sheds the blood, but also woe to him/her who also runs to look at blood that is shed. So, yeah, I don't look at gore splatter films like SAW. And I try to avoid films that feed fear. I don't mind being frightened, mind you, if the evil is conquered in the end. But when the baddie isn't really conquered and the filmmaker seems to be giving the idea that evil cannot be conquered (or evil is waaay more powerful than good) I won't see the film or read the book. Because it's just not true. Evil is relentless, but if you keep resisting it -- it'll give in.

Anyways, so far the thing that really scared me on this Chiller channel was a hitchcock piece. A cute little girl found a gun and wanted to play war with her brothers. She was innocent and cute and the boys were innocent and cute. No one evil but she had the gun and was walking around with it begging to play with them. It was heartbreaking and terrifying. Wow, never knew something that innocent could scare me. I couldn't watch it after a while...One just kept thinking someone's gonna get hurt.

Worrying for a young innocent and there was no baddy at all. I couldn't deal. We've gotten used to baddies doing evil and thinking that horror comes from people. Which it usually does. But this was horror that came from innocent people not understanding the world about them. And the director pushing our care for those kids and our desire to care for the innocent but being helpless to do so. Using the maternal/paternal instincts of the viewer. WOW!!! They manipulate us into the alleys of terror. And it WORKED! They often use kids to get our blood worked up. Hey, manipulation is part of art. The story is set up to prove a point, etc. The only time I don't like manipulation in a story is when there is something basically dishonest going on. Like movies which try to prove that women suffer because they can't have abortion. Most of those movies try to show that it's the woman's choice which is being curtailed and in real life most of the women I know who had aborions had them because their boyfriends, parents, friends, etc were forcing them to. Same goes for stories which show women being raped/impregnated and the hating the children they were forced to have. Rape is evil and cruel and the world has muddied sex with violence ...but nevertheless I have met several women who were either children of raped victim or mothers who were impregnated by rape and those women bonded with their kids the way any woman would. God has made the human heart very kind. That's not to say that all women love these children...just that most women do. (And I'm not picking on women who don't, BTW) Oh, yes...I'm digressing again.

Anyways, what got me in the gun-carrying story was how the filmmakers didn't use musical cues to force any emotion into me. The emotion I should have felt about the story was already in there -- the little kid was this sweet little blonde girl who was just so normal and cute and lonely-- .

I can't tell you how the story ended. I couldn't bring myself to watch it through to the end. Horror indeed. But perhaps it ended well.