For the love of Horror (and a much needed epilogue)

The full moon's glowing yellow, and the floorboards creek, C'est horrifique!

I wanna talk about my favourite genre, that is the horror genre. As a child growing up, horror always fascinated me, I remember my brother getting goosebumps stories and me ravenously reading them after. In times of isolation and feeling misunderstood growing up, I always found solace in the macabre and strange movie, books, found footage videos that were obviously fake but I always turned a blind eye and gave them the benefit of the doubt just because I live for terror. I hope this essay can pay homage to the genre that birthed The Ring, Frankenstein, Suspiria, Paranormal Activity and so many more cultural gems.

I can't recall, my memory has never served me well, when I think of the first time or the first encounter with something horrifying, I remember the fear I felt watching Paranormal Activity, the absolute marvel at The Ring and how I thought it was the coolest film ever, the genuine terror I felt watching The Grudge with my mom one night. Or that one time I read goosebumps for the first time and was over the clouds, and when my brother told me to watch a playthrough of a horror game, the first movie I watched illegally online being carrie. I can't remember, but sometimes it feels like horror has always been there for me, I didn't find comfort, rather a heartwarming or rather heart racing discomfort in the genre and a morbid curiosity that filled me with happiness and feeling like I belong somewhere, somewhere amongst the black haired white skinned dead girls and the head-turning (literally) phantoms of the horror genre, I belonged.

My mom didn't have any constraints on movies for me, and so I saw the movies alone at a young age, I'd be insomniac and terrified all night because I was also embarrassed to tell my mom I wanted to sleep with her and I also feared she'd ban me from watching them too. Watching a horror movie with my mom was a bonding activity too, we were the only ones in the family who didn't hate the genre (except my aunts, her sisters). It felt comforting sharing a terrifying experience with someone, you don't feel alone in your insomnia. My friends in childhood all hated horror too.

Endless summer nights spent watching creepy pasta analysis videos on YouTube. Horror has always been there for me. Internet forums and discussions about unsolved mysteries. The absolute astonishment when the conjuring came out and it was the first movie I see that was based on true events, I felt so close to my morbid fascination, I felt like It was real, like it's not just fiction, after all how can fiction Imbue me with such huge meaning and reason to look forward to midnight MBC2 screenings that I'd stay past my curfew for, mom would be angry, but I had my own alone time with the terrors and horrors of my imagination. Horror was a hobby to me, I (embarrassingly) had an Instagram page, where I'd post infographics and I would stories of horror, i remember having a wattpad where I'd write scary stories.

Horror was my escape from the daily horrors I was living, maybe I thought I shouldn't be so scared of my life when scarier things like ghosts and gory cinematic shots and jumpscares and possessed girls who I always thought were pretty btw, and I still do, no matter how snot or fluids they ooze out, no matter how malicious, they're always pretty.

I've always felt an inexplicable sense of belonging in the horror genre, I don't know why. Did I relate? I mean a life in Egypt terrified me, especially one when I was 5th grade or something, knowing I only will get transferred from a prison unit (school) to another in X amounts of years. I found so much solace in horror. Some unfathomable solace I found in the feeling of horror and morbidity, the lingering feeling of uneasiness I felt whenever I saw a movie in the middle of the might that would have me looking behind me all the time, running after turning the lights off. Maybe it was a coping mechanism, maybe it just distracted me from reality. I will forever owe it to the horror genre.

I'm so grateful for the horror gods; M Night Shyamalan and I know what you did last summer and final destination, cheesy creepypastas, sfx makeup artists who would do gore like no other.

There is something about horror and dark fiction that is familiar and homely, and at the same time, audacious.

-Mariana Enríquez, 'Notes on Craft', Granta

3:01pm—29/12/2023

I wrote this at the end of September-beginning of October. I was so excited for Halloween and I had already planned my costume, The Bride of Frankenstein, to match my fading purple hair which was light grey, with the help of a film noir filter and black hairspray, I had half of the look ready. I started my spooky movie marathon on October 1st, Coraline. The Nightmare before Christmas, Friday the 13th, The Craft, and I couldn't wait to rewatch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Then came October 7th, and the leisurely quality of the horror genre abruptly vanished. I watched real horror unfold before my eyes last Halloween, I didn't wanna be The Bride of Frankenstein anymore, I just wanted to stop seeing amputated limbs, unknown corpses and martyred babies. I watched, from the comfort of my home, the wiping out of Gaza, 200 miles from where I am. I just could not watch a horror movie after that, everything reminded me of Palestine, and the great deal of shame that my body can't process.

I was over at a friend's house a week ago and we decided to watch the new Saw X movie, and as soon as the nurse amputates her leg, I get overwhelmed with a sense of dread as I recall the picture i saw the day before on Motaz's story, of someone holding a severed hand above some rubble, and the many gory images from gaza. My mind goes blank as I try to stay present with my friends, who I dearly missed. Luckily there wasn't much more decapitation in the movie. But no matter what movie I watch, it ends, unlike the nightmare in Palestine and the barbaric nations of the world that are complacent in this. Gaza haunts me day and night still, and I don't seem to get over it. A neighboring ongoing genocide isn't really the thing to get over, and so if I have anything else to add let it be this:

Glory to all martyrs, do not numb yourself from reality and keep speaking up, and from the river to the sea Palestine will be free.