It has been a good long while since I last watched a scary movie that stayed scary after the credits rolled. Last night I watched just such a movie, It Follows. Without giving too much away, the premise is that there is a ghost, or haunting, that can be passed from person to person. Kind of like your friendly neighborhood STD. But more specifically, like your friendly neighborhood herpes. Because, much like herpes, even though you’ve shared the ghost, you always still kind of have the ghost. Sudden and unexpected ghost flair ups can happen. Oh, and since it’s a scary movie, ghost herpes can be fatal. You’re dying to watch this movie now, aren’t you?
I really liked this film because it hit on all the things that I think a good scary movie should. There was some blood, some “make you jump” parts, a lot of downright creepy stuff, and no gore for gore’s sake (I’m looking at you Eli Roth, stop making torture porn a thing). Also, kind of like the title implies, the movie stayed with me. I couldn’t fall asleep last night because I kept thinking about the story. Every time I would start to doze off I would think someone was standing in the doorway to my bedroom, or right outside the window next to my bed. Every time I closed my eyes I thought about ghost herpes.
You may now be thinking, “Aren’t you the mother of a toddler? Isn’t something that makes sleep harder kind of… well… bad?” If we were talking about rowdy neighbors throwing a rowdy all-nighter next door (that I was not invited to), then yes, that would be bad.
However a good scary movie is a thing of beauty. If it keeps you up at night, or has you still scared after the lights came back on, it has done it’s job. If, in the bright light of day, you find yourself suddenly unable to open the shower curtain after your shower because, what if there is someone standing on the other side of curtain… and you’re a grown ass woman who has had many a shower in her life without there EVER having been someone standing there waiting for you, then the movie has done it’s job very well.
Yes, I am the grown ass woman that waited an extra beat or two (or maybe closer to thirty beats) before opening the shower curtain this morning… whatever.
No, darling husband, this isn’t an invitation to sneak into the bathroom and wait to scare me the next time I shower.
Over the past twelve hours I have been giving a lot of thought to all of the good scary movies that I have seen. I have also given some thought to all of the bad ones, of which there have been many. I spent a few strange months playing the “let it roll” game on Netflix where every time I finished a movie and Netflix suggested another, I watched what they suggested.
Disclaimer: Everything EXCEPT Play Back staring Christian Slater, because I need to keep our love undiluted by the one star garbage that this movie undoubtedly was.
Needless to say, I’m a little extra jumpy today. It’s a good thing though, an enjoyable thing. Anytime a scary movie can stick with me like that I think of it as a win. It’s nice to be scared of something like this for a change instead of all the real world fears that are constantly in the undercurrents of my thoughts. Real life shit is terrifying. Ghost herpes are just scary. It’s nice to take a break from it all.
And mother, THAT’S why some people watch “that garbage”. That is, if you made it past the first paragraph without being too scared to finish.