The Quandary of Horror Films and I

So with my friend’s free Red Box rental we decided on The Woman in Black and thus began our evening of torture.  At the beginning we thought, or at least I did, “hey, alright, I can do this…” Then Harry Potter…I mean, Daniel Radcliff went in the house and I gave up all hope of coming out of this one unscathed.  I think it was the kids… I’m not ok with small children doing creepy things… you know, like singing, or staring at you, or jumping out of windows just for the hell of it… NOT COOL MAN, NOT COOL!!!  And this freakin movie piles that on like makeup on a model…

            The way I deal with horror films is like the way one would deal with a really nasty shot of some kind of strong alcohol… a chaser.  After I drove home from my friend’s house (in which I hit all the stop lights in front of all the creepy places between her house and mine which includes a graveyard, a hospital, and a condemned house…) I plopped myself down in front of my computer and watched National Lampoon’s Endless Bummer, thus painting over all of the scary stuff that I had just got done watching with a sort of opaque varnish. I could still see that creepy lady floating around and screaming at Daniel Radcliff, but there was a sort of California sunshine and beach curtain in front of it that I could look at instead.  Still slept with a light on for the next two nights.

            I’m like this with most horror movies that involve a sort of human entity as the problem, or haunt, or nemesis, or whatever you call it in horror films.  When I went to see Paranormal Activity 3 I think I slept with the light on for a week or so.  Of course, that one was much worse because A) I saw it in theaters and B) I did not have a chaser… Just came home to a dark apartment with my roommate who wasn’t helping maters.  I just don't like the idea of ghosts and haunting things is suppose.

            Which leads me to movies like 1408 and One Missed Call.  In 1408 the nemesis, if you will, is a hotel room that is inherently evil, there’s not much of an evil human presence in the place so much as the room itself is horror.  That movie I made it through fine.  One Missed Call was a possession and death notice sort of trip, somewhere along the lines of Final Destination.  There wasn’t really a human presence until the very end unless you count the creepy daughter, but she wasn’t a heavy plot point until you understood her and all she did was appear every once and a while and rush the camera with some weird sound effects.  I made it out of that one fine too.

            Perhaps this should be an ongoing thing, trying to subdivide the horror categories to find out why some scare me more than others, sounds interesting… I’ll keep it in mind.  Any insights?  Anyone else have this problem with horror movies?