How to Scare Yourself and Alienate Others

Amidst all the Valentine Day chat where one reassesses their past love life in all the dizzying heights of self loathing and the Carrie Bradshaw mouthpieces give you a manual on how to pull in Klute (cheers for that) there is one constant in my life that never lets me down: scary films.

Whether they are adrenalin pumpingly great or boring/ soul destroying (much like past relationships) all scary films eternally fascinate me. This revelation came to me during the facial ticks that Daniel Radcliffe so brilliantly portrays in the pretty much one man show that is ‘The Woman in Black.’

Despite the dodgy fan humming in The Gala Theatre and the 10 year old Geordie in front of me who couldn’t stop convulsing with laughter during the tensest scenes I kinda loved it. This fits into the cushy category of classic ghost story with its muted tones of grey and blue (conveying how fucking freezing 19th century Britain was) and your token creepy girl who voms blood (she poisons herself with lye apparently- don’t know exactly what lye is but it sounds bummout.)

The lack of resolution towards the end really stayed with me after- can’t help thinking the Woman in Black will be standing at the end of Allergate waiting to torment me.

Though she does pale in comparison to the chilling Samara Morgan of the Ring (I thought her last name added to the verisimilitude that Samara could actually be alive and kicking/ crawling out of her well.) The Ring is my all time favourite scary film. The lack of actual weapons coupled with the spreading contamination of this viral videotape make it a real 21st century keeper. The inevitability of it all makes even the most rational spectator avoid picking up the phone and instead place a thin mesh cage around their HD flat screen- though frankly that wouldn’t stop Samara coming to get you.

A more timeless scary film was ‘The Others’ was the hauntingly beautiful Nicole Kidman. Set in the fog entrenched island of Jersey (fog and inclement weather conditions are always a must) this capitalises on the fear of the other and yet again…. CREEPY LIGHTPHOTOSENSITIVE CHILDREN.

Kidman’s kids wonder around seeing ‘things’, most notably an aged woman with rolling eyes who is in fact acting as a medium in a séance conducted by the ‘ghosts’ who in actuality are alive. If this all sounds a little complicated it is- Grace (Kidman) killed her own two children in a fit of psychosis due to living in isolation and having a husband who went MIA in world war two and they are in fact the terrifying undead. The moral of this story is don’t be single and live in the countryside, it will only result in debilitating mental illness.

The scariest films are always those involving children– Hide and Seek, The Exorcist and perhaps the not as well known French film ‘Them’(Ils) where a couple are relentlessly tortured by a group of hooded youths in both their house and the sprawling woodland next to them. Most disturbingly after a couple of hours of perspiring anticipation and inexorable fear on behalf of the poor lovers Lucas and Clementine they are both dead and it is revealed that the intimidating group are in fact a bunch of kids aged 10-15 whose only reason for scaring the shit out of them before killing them is the tritely evil ‘They wouldn’t play with us.’ Wow.

So before you head off to a pretty countryside retreat with your other half this Valentines Day, just remember all the deranged kids out there who hate romance just that little bit too much.