Why I shouldn't watch horror movies

[MsFish]

Okay, so this probably doesn't deserve its own thread.  But I want to rant about it, so oh well.

So I watched the Ring and Ring Two last week within 24 hours of each other with friends.  Today I was reminded of why I should never never never watch horror movies.  

The prof I TA for asked me to run to his office during class tonight and make a copy of a video tape so he could give it to a student, because he hadn't had a chance to do it.  No problem.

So he gives me his keys and I go to his office.  There I am alone in his office in a mostly empty building.  I find the tape he wants me to copy (a very gruesome video about orphans in Romania, no less) and the blank tape, and go about figuring out how to work his system.  First the TV doesn't work.  Then it spontaneously starts working and after much static I get the thing to play and record.  However, when I hit record, the whole thing flips out and starts playing the video all funkified.  Meanwhile I'm expecting the phone to ring and tell me I'm going to die, or Samara to come crawling out of the TV.  I mean really, tortured orphans, misbehaving electronics, lots of static, copies of videotapes, all I needed was some girl to appear in the corner with hair over her face and then Dr. Nelson could have found me dead in his chair with my face all twisted up.  I was jumping at everything.  Totally ridiculous.  Doesn't help that the voiceover on the video sounds like the narrator at the Haunted Mansion.

Never did get the tape to copy (turns out it was encoded so you can't copy it) but I got my heart rate up for the day, so you know, whatever.

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

Well, as long as you're keeping yourself active, right on.

[Master Gopher]

This is weird because about two days ago a friend was telling me how she was watching The Ring with a few other friends at about 11pm. They then had to walk one of them down the road to her house, cause she was too freaked out to go back in the dark. On the way back again they passed a primary school that's in their street. In one of the rooms there was a TV and *just* as they passed it flicked on..then off... and on again....and then I don't know what it did because the story ends here, the girls just bolted home.

Wonder how many other stories there are like this? The whole TV/videao thing, I think, preys on our deep-seated horror of being called up and asked to please program the VCR.

[fuzzyoctopus]

I have a good "the ring" story like that.  We had the ps2 hooked up through the VCR at the time, and the VCR only stays on for three hours of inactivity. Since we'd be watching movies on the PS2, we wouldn't interact with the VCR at all -

So after watching The Ring, and then walking home in the dark, I realized that at any time during the rest of the evening the tv could go from black screen to loud static and snowjust like in the movie.

I told J.T. if that happened I was not  responsible for anything I might do.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I dont watch a lot of horror movies, because most of them are pretty dumb, still some of them can be pretty scary... very scary...
So I empathize....

[Dex1138]

Doesn't help that the voiceover on the video sounds like the narrator at the Haunted Mansion.  

That would be the late Mr Paul Frees  

[42]

I been meaning to comment on this subject.

See, I like to watch horror movies, precisely because I have clinical anxiety. I figure I might as get my money's worth out of my mental illness. Plus, I think it helps me to be scared in a fictional sense, then work through my anxiety afterwards.

[MsFish]

Yeah, my problem is that I take it out of a fictional sense, and start being scared of things in real life.  Especially supernatural things.  Maybe my imagination just works overtime, but I start convincing myself that things are real, and I can't get the images out of my head.  

[Dex1138]

Like those times when you go into the basement (or other dark place in the house) and just before you flick the light switch, you have a mental image of something lurking in the dark, just waiting for you to turn the light on before it pounces on you?
This was why I thought The Blair Witch Project was brilliant. It's not so scary while you're watching it...but the next time you're out in the woods at night, you'll remember it. Kinda like Jaws and swimming.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

uhm.. NO. Nothing at all was scary and/or well done about that movie.

[MsFish]

I thought Blair Witch was the scariest movie I'd ever seen, actually, because it doesn't actually show you anything...it leaves everything to your imagination, which can be much worse than anything they could show.  

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

except that nothing happened either. they wandered aroudn the woods, cussed a lot, and disagreed. nothing that they did or didn't show was remotely scary.

Look, I *wanted* to be scared by this one. I was told it was scary. However, I turned off all the nights, watched it when I was home alone, and started it at like midnight. I was BORED by it.

[MsFish]

I wasn't bored.  I was terrified.

[Oldie Black Witch]

Now we know SE's superpower: being bored by otherwise terrifying movies.

[fuzzyoctopus]

I honestly never watched it.  Though we might have a copy on our shelf, I'm not sure.

Everyone I know was either
1)very scared by it or
2)bored and nauseated by the camera work

I don't think either sounded very appealing, so I don't think I'll watch it since it sounds like there's about a 90% chance I won't like it.  Much for the same reason I never watched Titanic.