Halloween movies give Commentary writer pause

By Mark Costello
Collegian Editor
November 1, 2006

I hope everyone’s Halloween was as terrific (in the old sense of the word) and spine-tingling as the Collegian staff’s was. For many of us, Halloween is one of our favorite times of the year. I, and this week’s writers, will be expounding on the relative virtues and vices of the holiday in this edition, each with a different focus. I’ll be taking an opportunity to discuss with all of our readers one of my favorite aspects of Halloween: horror films.

There are few ways to examine a culture or society that are as lucrative as watching films. Movies are, by their nature as artworks, reflective of the society that produces them in some way, shape or form (which bodes ill for a society producing Scary Movie sequels in scads—just saying, is all). That being said, Halloween offers us students of the human condition an excellent chance to see what it is we fear, and just what that says about us.

We’re afraid of the dark. This is why that scene in Silence of the Lambs where Buffalo Bill is tracking Agent Starling through his basement using night vision goggles freaks us out. We’re scared of what we can’t see (read: what we can’t understand/control), so movies where protagonists (like Clarice Starling) are stumbling through the dark, being trailed by a monster, freak us out to no end. Good, bad or indifferent, we’re a society obsessed with controllable events leading towards desirable outcomes, and whatever lies beyond our scope of vision makes us, at the very least, uncomfortable.

We’re afraid of our own houses. This is why Hellraiser gives us a mighty heavy case of the heebie-jeebies. That entire film revolves around people going up to the attic and not coming back down. The Goosebumps series of books contained titles such as Don’t Go in the Basement, and we spread urban legends about babysitters being hacked to tiny bits by knife-wielding maniacs that snuck into the children’s room. Technically, I suppose this is an extension of our fear of the dark, but (literally) brought home to us: imagine the unknown or the uncontrollable within the sanctity of our own house. It’s, again, unsettling to say the least.

We’re afraid of things that are immortal or impervious to pain. This is a direct extension of our fear of the uncontrollable, and is why the Night of the Living Dead, Pumpkinhead, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and Friday the 13th series give us the frights. Zombies, the Pumpkinhead demon, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees are unstoppable. You kill them, and they come back. You kill them again, and they come back again. They defy our understanding of the very universe: all things begin, all things end. These guys don’t end—they can’t die. We can, so their immortality, coupled with their bloodlust, creeps us out: they’re killing machines that can’t be turned off. From vampires to werewolves, almost every Halloween monster has this in common.

It really is interesting to view these movies as a reflection of our society. We are a society obsessed with control, and each of these horror film elements are, basically, displays of people with no control over their situation or selves. We are afraid of these things because, on a basic level, we’re scared of being in situations that we can’t get out of, that nothing can fix or bring into our general range of understanding, under intellectual or physical prowess.

So kick back, take in a flick, and check out what your culture views as scary. In those films, those fears will be right in front of your eyes. Or, in the basement, or the attic, or right behind you...

costellom4@lasalle.edu