If you watch a horror flick at too young an age, are you scarred for life? It's a good question and one I have some personal insight on.
Here's a question. Should the title say Scarred For Life or should it have been Scared For Life? I know more than a couple people that won't have anything to do with clowns. Perhaps they watched a certain horror flick at too young an age?
My First Horror Film? The Shining!
That old Stephen King masterpiece is the one that got me and I saw it at way too young of an age. I actually didn't watch the whole movie, but only caught bits and pieces as my parents kept shooing me away.
Needless to say, I caught enough to get the jist of the story. Not seeing the whole thing probably made it worse as it allowed my imagination to run wild. It wasn't until years later that I got to celebrate the brilliance of Danny and his snow-laden victory in the maze.
Incidentally, I never had an urge to sleep in my parent's bed after that 1st partial viewing of The Shining.
I Dropped The Doritos With My Eldest Son
It's a case of 20/20 hindsight that tells me allowing my son to watch The Thing at a young age probably wasn't one of my better fatherly decisions.
Devin still talks about it to this day quite a few years later. I remember the night about 9 years back when my wife and I were separated. I had the kids that night and somehow the movie came on.
Ok it was me. I admit, I put it on and wasn't making good life decisions in general at the time. Little Devin talked his way through the entire movie, asking questions every 10 - 20 seconds.
I honestly don't know how we made it through the entire film. We did and Devin now loves horror films and stories. So does his younger brother Logan.
Whether the kids were scarred by the movies is unlikely in my opinion. Things changed dramatically in my life and marriage shortly after that time. The kids have had a safe and nurturing environment to grow up in, which I think, makes all the difference.
Now We Can't Pass Up A Quality Horror Film
Our family definitely loves a good scary movie. It's funny with my wife though. She can't stand too much gore. Violence in itself doesn't always bother her but if it's especially gruesome she can't watch it.
She does the shining.
It's not surprising, really, coming from a woman who can't stand eating cooked fish but loves sushi. ???
It's all those little quirks that make us all unique I suppose.
Put on Annabelle, The Conjuring, or a movie like The Nun and my wife is fully entranced. It's that psychological mind twisting horror she enjoys, and I do too.
How Old Were You? What Horror Flick Was It?
Much thanks to @gooddream who inspired the idea for this post. He reminded me of the movie Dreamscape with Dennis Quaid in one of his recent publications. A movie, he said, scared the @#$& out of him when he was young.
So what scary flick scarred you for life? Let me hear about it in the comments.....
If you are brave enough to answer, mwuhahaha!!
Happy (or scared) Hiveing!
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