Ah, it's that wonderful time of year when everybody lazily dresses up as a zombie, carves pumpkins and eats way too many sweets and chocolate. As it's a load of old arse, I generally tend to spend Halloween watching a horror movie in the flickershow. This year, seeing as the selfish scallywags behind the Saw franchise have shut up shop, a friend and I went to see the latest Paranormal Activity installment.
Now, I'm not reviewing the flick and I'm not even going to say much about the content. My reason for that being that I simply don't know if I liked it. That's not to say it's one of those films where it's teetering on that fine line between awesomeness and utter farce, it's that the overall viewing exerience was ruined by people who simply don't now how to conduct themselves during a horror flick. Now these aren't your mindless noisy chavs
(whereby you have a chance of getting them to can it if you have the balls to tell them they're pissing you off), they're a different kettle of fish altogether.
The people responsible for my moviegoing frustration are the lads that take a girl to see a horror because all the other films suggest that you're more likely to get some ass if she's shitting herself and you can protect her from the nasty, meanie movie. Now, it'd be bloody lovely if that was the case, but it ain't. For one thing, the ladies are nowhere near as squeamish and easily scared by films as they were back in the nineties. That's no doubt thanks to the influx of slashers and splatter films that have bombarded box offices over the past two decades. The truth is that today there's just as much a chance of a guy shrieking like a girl should a jumpy bit come up - and that's where the problem lies.
You see, it would appear that showing fear (or even being succeptable to being caught off guard by a jump-moment) is a dating faux-pas so severe that will mean you'll never get to see her with her bra off. Of course, to slag anybody off for trying to appear brave is just unfair - we've all done it. What really grinds my gears though is how they go about conducting their futile effort to prove their lack of fear.
Laughing is the first thing that you'll notice. A moment will come up that, if the guy was watching it alone in a darkened room, it would reduce him to a gibbering mess. Naturally then, laughing is a two bird-one stone sort of solution as it not only covers up your wuss-like fear, it shows just how easily you can handle such intensely scary material - meaning that she thinks you're the shit. Of course it'd be slightly convincing if the moment in question warranted even half the laughter it gets. As such, the guy annoys the rest of the theatre as he blunders along his marathon-like quest to get his dick wet.
The other thing that happens isn't rare in films like Paranormal Activity where there's a lot of silence that's punctuated here and there with some pretty hefty jumps. Like everyone else in the cinema, the guy shoots out of his seat (what with it being a completely natural reaction and all) and inadvertently reveals himself to be a pussy human in front of the girl he wants to take horizontal jogging. He knows she saw his female-repellant reaction and so he decides to counter it by, you've guessed it, talking to her about it. Heaven forbid that the girl not think he's a badass.
It's these guys that can also spoil a film for people who aren't sure who they feel about it yet and would quite like to mull it over once the credits start rolling. That's wrecked too though as the guy just cannot leave the cinema without highlighting at volume just how stupid the film is and how it was not scary at all. As such, others assume he's got it right and leave the cinema convinced they've had a bad time - all because he's having a pissing contest with his own sense of fear.
I remember years ago when The Exorcist was re-released in Britain. A number of people I know went to see it (I was 16 at the time so I didn't) and, when I quizzed them on how scary it was, I was informed that it was funny by today's standards. Well years went by and I avoided it as the trailer gave me a week's worth of sleepless nights. Eventually, one Halloween when I was 21 and in university, it was on TV. I decided that I'd have to face that fear if I was to be a film reviewer and so I settled down to watch a film that was almost certainly likely to leave me a mess of a man, quaking in fear as my then girlfriend was asleep in the next room. Well, the film went on and within half an hour I was bricking it and kicking myself as to how I'd left it so long before I'd indulged in the masterpiece. One thing that was certain though, none of that film was funny. It was terrifying. Brilliantly, beautifully haunting stuff. That's when I realised how these "laughers" get on my last nerve.
If you're reading this and feel a little guilty, then don't. It's pretty understandable to want to seem tough and have nerves of steel. Just remember though that you could be ruining the film for others and, if you're being that loud, you're probably over-egging the compensation pie anyway. So just do us all a favour and shut it.
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