The Hope in a Horror Movie

I'm kind of a final girl if you think about it.

Hey! Before you start diving into this little newsletter, please know that it was written about a time in my life where I was struggling with intense anxiety. Rather than seeking help (because that was scary), I found my own patchwork methods to keep myself shakily upright on the tightrope of feeling “okay”. While I usually like to let writing speak for itself, and don’t like to give away the plot, I also think that this is too important of an issue to risk misinterpretation. I’m sharing this story 1. to share my love of horror movies and where that love stems from and 2. to show that sometimes something silly and unexpected can be the thing that makes you realize you need to change your life. Horror movies did not cure my mental illness, they made me see that the things I was intensely worried about were not normal things to intensely to worry about.

If you are struggling with your mental health, please seek out help from a trusted loved one and a medical professional. Do not watch a horror movie. Or maybe do, but don’t let it be the only thing you do.

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“I love horror movies!”

“Oh! I wouldn’t expect that from you.”

And, from first glance, why would you? I’m an elementary school art teacher. I wear big dumb (said affectionately) turtleshell glasses, overalls, and the brightest most bubblegum-est pink shirts that you can imagine. I read romance novels by the dozen and doodle flowers and bunnies in my sketchbook. And, if we’re being honest, I’m a Disney adult (SUE ME). It’s not that you have to have a certain look to be a horror movie fan, but most of the time, I am definitely not doing anything edgy or cool enough to emit “Horror Movie Baddie” vibes.

(If you cringed at my use of “Horror Movie Baddie” and “vibes”, same. Gen Alpha/Z/???? speak has infiltrated my vernacular. I can’t think of a better phrase right now. We’re rolling with it.)

As it turns out, stereotypes are fake (duh) and I am a huge fan of anything that creeps and crawls and goes bump in the night. But, most of all, I love a final girl. A stoic badass, terrified of being hunted but determined to survive. Walking towards a camera in a bloody tee shirt while the horrors she faced go up in flames behind her.

I was never much of a final girl, but as a high school student, hyperventilating in the bathroom during biology class, I wanted nothing more than to be one. That day, I rushed to the bathroom as soon as I turned in my exam, convinced that I failed (I got a B). This wasn’t uncommon. There are a lot of bathrooms that bare the memory of my freak-out sessions.

A lot of my time in high school and college was spent feeling out of control in my brain. While I would later recognize this in therapy as an anxiety disorder, for a long time it was coined in my household as being “neurotic”, “dramatic”, “caring a lot”, etc. My parents would look at me vomiting in the bathroom (afraid that my art final wasn’t good enough, thinking I failed a test, yadda yadda) and see a teenager who was determined to succeed in her craft. To this day, my (very much type-B) mom laughs when she thinks about how I would come home sobbing because I got a C on a test.

I come from a position of privilege. My parents and grandparents were my pillars of support and my loudest cheerleaders. I surrounded myself with friends who applied themselves academically and had the grades to show for it. But, mental illness is a funny thing. While I know my family and friends would have supported me wholeheartedly if I told them I was suffering, my (mentally ill, swiss cheese) brain was convinced that asking for help was an admittance of weakness. My anxiety was based on feeling like I wasn’t good enough for the people in my life. To go up to them and say that something was wrong felt like concrete proof that I really was the failure I feared to be.

Of course, you need to admit that you need help in order to receive it, and since I refused to do that, I needed a makeshift solution to keep myself from falling over the edge.

At this time, I had a hopeless crush on my gay best friend (a humbling experience I believe everyone should endure), and he loved anything scary. I started reading Stephen King because he read it, and I started watching horror movies because he loved them too. My dad supported the habit (as a long term King fan, and as a parent who didn’t know I was trying to impress a boy), and the two of us would watch The Shining and whatever other horror films hit my radar.

It turns out that I love being scared.

I had spent so much time mentally living in a place where fear was a thing that happened to me, out of control and unmanageable. When I watched a horror movie, I knew I was going to be scared, it was my choice, my control. It also made me feel like a complete badass when I watched a scary movie and I wasn’t scared. There was a shield of bravery (and let’s be real, ego) when my friends would be too afraid to watch a movie that I had yawned through.

These were the days where netflix had just launched their streaming service, and oh boy, did I take advantage. Homework? Time to have a horror movie play in the background. Painting? Let’s throw on a horror movie. Friends want to watch a movie? Horror movie anyone? No? Just me? Anyone want to go to a haunted house? The scare actors can grab you? No, again?

I watched horror movies in a boarder line obsessive way, both to gain a sense of control but to also, in a funny kind of way, to give myself a sense of perspective. It’s kind of hard to take yourself seriously for freaking out over a math test when you just saw someone get an axe to the face on tv the night before. I often started daydreaming about being a final girl, but not so much in the “there’s someone trying to kill me way”. More so, I loved seeing these women experience true fear. They might cry, or beg, or tremble through their experience — but they got through hell anyway. It would have been easy to lay down and die, but they fought for life, and usually won. If they could crawl out of the woods on their bellies and beat the killer at his own game, maybe I could…I don’t know…take a deep breath? Imagine talking to Laurie Strode and being like “oh yeah I totally understand what you’re going through because I had a final exam and I needed to barf about it”. PLEASE.

The peak of my horror movie obsession was over a decade ago now, but I still hold an affection for the spooky and scary close to my heart. I don’t watch them everyday anymore, but I do love taking my husband or my best friends to see the newest film I’m excited about. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that after I started seeking therapy in college, my horror movie binges started to go away. My anxiety is mostly in check, and I don’t feel a need to experience fear on my own terms in order to cope with it. Honestly, this is a much better way to enjoy the genre. There’s definitely a difference between wanting to watch something and feeling like you have to in order to feel better.

There’s a lot of joy in a coping strategy, be it making art or reading books or watching someone get covered in fake movie blood. Whatever floats your paper boat down the storm drain or whatever Pennywise said. But my coping strategy definitely bordered on obsession for a hot minute there, and if you’re feeling like that might be you, then that means it could be time to talk to a professional. If you are in a position to seek help, please do. I’m so glad I’m no longer the girl who felt like her entire life rode on academic success. I wish I could sit her down and tell her that she eventually won’t feel how she feels in those moments. Maybe we’d watch a horror movie.