What scares me most
My mom has always been into scary flicks. And ever since I was a kid of about 8, I’d sneak out from my room and, on the sly, watch with her her weekly fare of horror TV. There was Fright Night every, well, Fridays, and Wednesday Shocker every, yah, guess when. These were programs showing different features or flicks, they were more like a compilation than a TV series, much like how Twilight Zone compiles tales from the Land of Weird. Apart from that, there were the actual horror films shown on TV.
Needless to say, I’ve acquired some level of immunity to the cinematic genre that is the horror flick. Vampires, especially when they evolved from the days of Christopher Lee to those of Underworld, Queen of the Damned, and the rest of their ilk, became less of blood suckers and more of fashion mavens of the Alexander McQueen-esque haute goth school of style. If someone asked me to watch a vampire flick these days, I wouldn’t be watching a horror flick as much as a 2-hour music video pretending to have a plot.
Even the demonic side of the horror flick spectrum hasn’t cause a ripple in my placid lake of scary-movie jadedness. The Exorcist? Saw that when I was in grade school. The Exorcist: Director’s Cut? The one with deleted scenes, including that showing a half-demoned-out Linda Blair doing some satanic spider crawl up the kitchen wall? Okay, points scored for freaky, not all that special nonetheless.
Then there are those flicks that play less on special effects and more on “reality,”― the “non-fiction” feel hinged on the premise that scary things scare more if they hit closer to home. There was The Shining (which basically affirmed my belief that anyone with the acting chops of Jack Nicholson can screw all the jailbait he wants with my approval), Blair Witch Project (which, I’ll admit, had that last scene with Michael facing the wall, lingering in my head for a couple of days), The Ring (which, sure, had me doing a double take every time I passed our TV set at home) ― but nothing that’s caused me to lose sleep or crawl into my mom’s bed for fear of sleeping alone.
Freddie from Elm Street? Jason the masked and unkillable psycho killer? Sadako and the rest of her pale-powdered, eyebag-ridden human ghouls? Been there, done that, too bored to do it again tomorrow.
So when a good buddy of mine excitedly announced that he had the DVD of 28 Weeks Later and that we should ready the microwaveable pop corn and head over to his place, I hesitated. I stalled. For the longest time.
Because if there’s one thing that scares the pants, skin, and spleen off me, it’s zombies.
Very few of my friends know this because I wouldn’t know how to explain why someone they’ve always believed to be plucky is afraid of these undead. Coz if you think about it, zombies are more or less bottomfeeders in the hierarchy of creatures that scare. But there it is: I’m okay with Satan invading hapless girls, but I cannot, absolutely cannot stand zombies.
The first time I watched Night of the Living Dead was two years ago. In broad daylight. And even then, never mind that at the rate these creatures were vaguely sauntering, one had enough time to run to the car, smoke a cigarette, and drive off to safety, I would find myself in a state of catatonic fear, of complete paralysis, like a mouse caught between a rock and Hell.
Can you imagine what that scene in 28 Weeks Later, where everyone was trapped in the subway and one zombie caused a tsunami of zombies bite after bite in supersonic speed, did to me? I thought one of them was gonna rip through the screen! Coz that’s what zombies in the Era of Broadband do! They rip through wood, concrete, or human flesh once they home in on you. And the rage. I think that’s another thing that really gets to me. Such pure and basal rage. Vampires have malice, and the Devil’s just got a grudge against God so he takes it out on the Emily Roses of the world. But zombies? You look into their bloodshot, vacant eyes and you know you are in the gaze of a primal predator, his abominable intent on your person strong enough to just keep you rooted to your spot and turn into a puddle of fear. They’re not just hungy, they’re famished, they’re LIVID. Or you can run like you’ve never ran in your life, the mere thought of being the object of all that rage making you hope, not that you escape, no, but that you keel over from your heart just giving out mid-sprint before they catch up and bare-handedly slaughter you with all the visceral rawness of a rape.