I Scared Myself
Oct. 26th, 2023 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoyI had never seen Hereditary, so I decided to watch it last night! I live-tweeted i on Twitter and on Bluesky (live-skeeted?), but tl;dr I enjoyed it immensely! It was especially fun dorking out over the Utah scenery!
I just don't understand people in horror movies who walk into horrific tableaux, like, for example, finding your kid's decapitated body in the back seat of your car and immediately start screaming actual bloody murder. Wouldn't it take you a moment to process it, to put together what sequence of events led to this moment of Bad News? Or maybe that's me. Is it the autism?
Speaking of autism, I wound up especially intrigued by the Creepy Girl.Creepy Children in horror movies always fascinate me. They're written and directed to seem neurodivergent, and as a late-diagnosed ND person I gotta say, it's kind of a revelation that ND mannerisms default to creepy for writers and directors. I mean, I've had to learn to read NT body language, so I can also understand that the flat affect and weird stims/tics* and special interests and stilted, developmentally skewed language come across and confusing--I just never notice when I'm doing it MYSELF.
I did think it was funny that in this movie the Calamitous Horror Disaster was a direct result of the worried mom pressuring her ND kid to Go Out And Socialize Like A NORMAL Kid, Jeez. I'm waiting for the Scream franchise to add that to the list of Horror Movie Rules: along with Don't Go To Irresponsible Teenage Sex Parties and Don't Drive While High, you gotta put Don't Pressure Your ND Kid To Act Neurotypical.
Anyway, I used to be impatient with demon-type movies because I thought they implied that Christianity was true in the movie universe, and my grumpy atheist ass has Issues with Biblical worldbuilding. But then I realized that these movies only posit that demons are real, just disembodied malevolent entities all floatin' around randomly terrorizing hapless dumbasses, and religion might have evolved as humans' attempt to gain some semblance of control of the monsters. I mean, look at human responses to other disasters--plague, famine, pestilience, natural disasters, predators, trauma, abuse, and neurodivergence! It makes sense that a cult would pop up trying to bargain with this! Poor, confused humans just trying to make sense of a confusing universe. That's what horror is all about, Charlie Brown!
FUN STORY: When my sister was tiny, she was sitting in her car seat munching on a box of croutons as a snack, and she dangled the box out the open window. The croutons got blown out of her hand and she dramatically screamed, "MY CROUTONS!" as they flew away. That was my first thought when That Scene happened.
We also tell a story about how my sister, in her car seat, screamed bloody murder for no apparent reason. There was a beat. Then a little gasp, and she cried out in the inexplicable Southern accent she had as a toddler, "I scared myself!"
Given these two incidents, I consider this movie to be the Little Sister Car Seat Special.
*Dammit, what is that click sound she makes called? I'm fairly sure it's a retroflex click, but the internet is cagey about clicks for some reason.
I just don't understand people in horror movies who walk into horrific tableaux, like, for example, finding your kid's decapitated body in the back seat of your car and immediately start screaming actual bloody murder. Wouldn't it take you a moment to process it, to put together what sequence of events led to this moment of Bad News? Or maybe that's me. Is it the autism?
Speaking of autism, I wound up especially intrigued by the Creepy Girl.Creepy Children in horror movies always fascinate me. They're written and directed to seem neurodivergent, and as a late-diagnosed ND person I gotta say, it's kind of a revelation that ND mannerisms default to creepy for writers and directors. I mean, I've had to learn to read NT body language, so I can also understand that the flat affect and weird stims/tics* and special interests and stilted, developmentally skewed language come across and confusing--I just never notice when I'm doing it MYSELF.
I did think it was funny that in this movie the Calamitous Horror Disaster was a direct result of the worried mom pressuring her ND kid to Go Out And Socialize Like A NORMAL Kid, Jeez. I'm waiting for the Scream franchise to add that to the list of Horror Movie Rules: along with Don't Go To Irresponsible Teenage Sex Parties and Don't Drive While High, you gotta put Don't Pressure Your ND Kid To Act Neurotypical.
Anyway, I used to be impatient with demon-type movies because I thought they implied that Christianity was true in the movie universe, and my grumpy atheist ass has Issues with Biblical worldbuilding. But then I realized that these movies only posit that demons are real, just disembodied malevolent entities all floatin' around randomly terrorizing hapless dumbasses, and religion might have evolved as humans' attempt to gain some semblance of control of the monsters. I mean, look at human responses to other disasters--plague, famine, pestilience, natural disasters, predators, trauma, abuse, and neurodivergence! It makes sense that a cult would pop up trying to bargain with this! Poor, confused humans just trying to make sense of a confusing universe. That's what horror is all about, Charlie Brown!
FUN STORY: When my sister was tiny, she was sitting in her car seat munching on a box of croutons as a snack, and she dangled the box out the open window. The croutons got blown out of her hand and she dramatically screamed, "MY CROUTONS!" as they flew away. That was my first thought when That Scene happened.
We also tell a story about how my sister, in her car seat, screamed bloody murder for no apparent reason. There was a beat. Then a little gasp, and she cried out in the inexplicable Southern accent she had as a toddler, "I scared myself!"
Given these two incidents, I consider this movie to be the Little Sister Car Seat Special.
*Dammit, what is that click sound she makes called? I'm fairly sure it's a retroflex click, but the internet is cagey about clicks for some reason.
