You know, in a horror movie, everyone always responds with a flight response when they see the monster. But that’s not the only thing that happens when people get scared. I want to see someone choose the fight response. I want to see a character turn around to see the killer right there, scream in terror, and start punching them in the face repeatedly.
The first time I ever got to participate in and enjoy a scary thing of any kind was a zombie LARP set up like a haunted house. I can’t do regular haunted houses or even scary movies because my fight or flight response is permanently set to DESTROY THREAT ON SIGHT. Restraining that impulse is incredibly taxing and leaves me with a overwhelming sense of helplessness, not fun at all. But in the LARP they gave us foam weapons and armor, put us in a spooky maze with gruesome zombies, and told us to go to town (within reason.) It was AMAZING, highly recommended.
yeah, i have always been ‘run toward the screaming’ guy as well.
also, as someone who has lived in suburban and rural areas a lot, i always roll my eyes when poor ol’ dumb farmer bob sees something out in the cornfield and promptly sets off to find it, possibly with a rusty old double-barrel under his arm.
look, if you think it might be a coyote stalking the chickens or a bear digging in the garbage, you don’t sneak up on it. you turn on all the outside lights (and yes, your random kansas farm does have floodlights that cover the whole area around the barn and outbuildings, and they’re bright as hell), wake up somebody else for backup or stay on the phone with animal control, and make a shit ton of noise the whole time you’re investigating. bang doors. whack empty oil drums with a 2×4. you’re not trying to catch a spy, you’re trying to spook a wild animal out of wrecking your stuff.
of course, your horror filmmaker can then have the grumpy farmer, satisfied there’s no coyotes in the barn, stomp back to the house, only to get chainsawed in the kitchen or whatever. but at least he wasn’t acting like ‘omg i heard a noise’ was an unusual or insurmountable difficulty on rural land, for crying out loud.
and i dunno how common this is, but – ok, you know the thing where someone thinks their friends are playing a prank, and they hunch around going “guys this isn’t funny” until they get jumped? i know i’m not the only one who reacts to such a situation, instead, by announcing “sing out or find your own way home, jackass,” and firmly marching to the car and locking myself in, turning on the engine and the lights. in my case it was a graveyard, which meant when i turned on the high beams i could very easily see mister spooky prankster hunching ‘behind’ a headstone like he was taking a dump. i laid on the horn. he fell over.
like, i’m a good sport, but this is a public outdoor space at night, hobos sleep here. no, i’m not going to play naked victim when i’ve got a two ton hunk of metal at my disposal.
i figure, once upon a time, when horror stories were new, people didn’t really spend a lot of time contemplating how they’d defend themselves or escape from a threat. but it’s all in the collective consciousness now. you could be stalking the blondest, bikiniest camper in the whole spooky woods, find her flooding her engine in the most helpless of stranded panics, and still not be sure she wouldn’t react to your gruesome visage by pulling a tire iron out from under the passenger seat and whacking your face off.
a sad day for monsters, my friends. horror is turning into adventure and there’s nothing the monsters can do about it.
just moving along like everyone else 