This I Believe: Scary Movies

I believe that if you introduce your children to scary movies in their own time and amid your supervision, they will fare well.

My own children had been, short of falling to their knees into a series of deep bows, begging to watch a scary movie with me. This is quite a different passage into the realm of scare flicks than I had taken with my own brother during our childhood. Ours were NEVER adult supervised--we watched WHATEVER we wanted in the wee hours of the weekends. Oftentimes, whatever we wanted was usually clad in a hockey mask wielding a machete, maiming dim-witted campers or jailed psychotic women, scantily clad, beating the crap out of each other until finally uniting against an equally psychotic warden.

So for my children, scare flicks have been off-limits...until now. They frequently check out scary tales from the library, with grand hopes of fear and spine tingles but have complained that they are not scary enough. Try as they may, and they've tried hard, they have not been scared.

This past weekend, it was just going to be the three of us and I suggested we get some scare flicks, kid friendly of course, and watch them together. They erupted into screams of joy and the path was set. My only concern was to avoid damaging their precious little minds in the process. Little did I know, my children are robots--their fear tolerance is pretty damn high, scary little bastards.

Before our weekend, we dropped into our local movie store and the helpful clerks, after laughing at the idea of kid-friendly horror, began scoping the aisles, making suggestions for my children. These guys were great and clearly, movie geeks--I trusted their recommendations completely. But I had some ground rules, after all, I have standards:

I didn't want killing for the sake of killing, no senseless violence, unless used necessarily against, say, the undead. Minimal blood, again, context was everything--blood rising in a haunted sink is categorically different from blood pulsing from a freshly chopped head. Preferably a movie whose central "evil" was a force wreaking havoc versus a crazed lunatic hacking limbs and other such appendages. And absolutely NO sexual violence.

The movie geeks moved agilely within my restraints and we settled on Stephen King's "It" and "The Omen". I had seen them both in my youth and been given a good helping of fear from each, so I talked them up to the kiddos. They were busting at the seams with excitement and I too was thrilled to be sharing this with my kids. I still love a good scary movie and had, in my own childhood, completely tortured myself with them.

I suggested we watch them during the day so as to not exacerbate the fear in darkness and further suggested we split them up over our weekend to avoid saturating ourselves in fear. I was on unusual ground here--I could rob them of their innocence. I was taking a huge risk and I knew it. In hindsight, I was quite unfair to myself for my children are of the corn.

They thought the boy in Omen was a tad spooky and the tale of his shenanigans certainly interesting but they were more disturbed by the death of the mother, the injustice of the father's early demise and interruption of their marriage bliss. Further noting that they would never be parents, all they ever wanted was a child, they would've made great parents. Alright. But did you see his eyes? What about that nanny and the way she ran out of the room at the father? And the boy, he was born from a jackal you know? My children missed the horror in the horror and got caught up in thinking too damn much.

So, against my initial plan, we popped "It" right into the DVD player and I told them to brace themselves. I talked it up. I closed the shades and turned off the lights to puff up the effect. This was going to be the one. We each found our place in the living room, hugged into our bodies and braced for fear.

Nada.

The credits were rolling and I even found my own self disappointed because, as an adult, it wasn't as disturbing as I remembered and the 'special' effects weren't so special now 20 years later.

I felt dejected. I had failed to horrify my children when they wanted to be horrified so desperately. I needed bigger guns. I rummaged through our own movie collection and, lacking any real choice of 'horror', settled on "The Village"--it certainly spooked me the first time I saw it, before I realized that the village and it's beast were a fabrication. The key difference is, my children already knew it was a fabrication. I shared it with them in my retelling of the movie several months back.

Long story short, my son fell asleep and my daughter said, "I was a little scared when she saw the beast in the woods" but again, was more saddened by the skinning of the animals and intrigued by the fabricated community.

Damn.

All three movies in one day and nothing. Not so much as a jolt or a gasp.

Determined to spook their pants off, I stopped into the movie store the next day and rented "The Ring"--this had to be the one. I couldn't go to sleep after watching it a few years ago, it played with my mind, kept me on the edge of the sofa and made my heart race--I LOVED it! And bottom line, they wanted ALL of this--they wanted the chill, the racing heart, breath held and fists clenched--and I wanted to give this to them. Now more than ever and at this point, I was hell bent on freaking this kids out, in a mother's love sort of way.

I hadn't given anything away on this, hadn't disclosed the slightest detail except to say--you asked for it so here it is. They were charged man--totally unable to contain their nervous excitement and I was freakishly stoked to rattle their cage.

We had a little better luck with this one, they were on the edge of their seats but still no absolute terror. And you know, I guess that's good. I didn't want to scar them but I also love that we're crossing into new territory as parents and children. Just like first steps, toilet training success, buckling themselves into the car seat and taking their own bath--we've reached a milestone.

For this I believe, I'm glad they want to watch these movies with me. Horror movies for me, at their age, were always watched with my brother and that's cool too but I'm more into family time as a mom myself. Furthermore, it's super-cool that now, not all movie nights have to be in separate rooms divided by our age.

I guess above all else, this proves that my children have a pretty firm grasp on reality and I like that.