15.9.10

Terror and Horror. What is the dif?


Watching the movie "Copycat" was probably the single most terrifying moment of my life. I was fifteen years old at the time and it was movie night with my girlfriends. We all curled up on the single bed my mother had turned into a couch and settled in with blankets, popcorn, ect. From the moment the first serial killer corners Dr. Helen Hudson in the washroom a cold sweat covered my body. A paralyzing fear swept over me and all I could do to make it through the film was to cover myself completely in a blanket with only a small eye and nose hole. My body actually felt paralyzed and it took the only sense I had left to just remember to breath. It was that feeling you have when your dreaming and you need to move because a train or car or something is going to run over you but you cannot for some reason move any of your limbs. The intense fear the movie created for me was so real. I could not move my body at all even go to the washroom. I just sat there frozen, sweating and hardly able to speak besides the odd barely audible squeak. The fact that Dr. Helen Hudson was an agoraphobic probably did not help matters. I have never watched a scary movie since that night. The terror i feel when watching them is just not worth it for me.

 I know for some people this movie was probably comical at best. This is why the distinction between terror and horror can be subjective. Terror is the anticipation of something "bad or scary or gruesome" happening and horror is  actually witnessing or experiencing  this "bad, scary or gruesome"thing. A horror film for example which is all blood and guts is just that for some people for myself however it is absolutely terrifying. Horror to me is driving or walking around ring round and seeing the blood and guts of some poor bunny that has now become road kill. Terror is said to precede horror. That being said there is terror without horror. Which to me is probably worse in the case of a book or film because just never knowing is the worst. In real life if the horror never comes that is just fine with me. I guess you can have horror without terror but that seems more tricky.  A lack of build up to a horrific occurrence could be a case of horror minus the terror. The example of the bunny cold be horror without terror... unless there was a witness to the build up of the roadkill.

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