On Chronic Illness and the Comfort of Slashers
There's a fine line between comfort and fear for me, and as I sit on my couch and cue up the next violently bloody horror movie on my watch list, I'm reminded just how thin that line really is. I don't know why I find it so relaxing to watch masked killers stab, slice, chop, and slash their way through large groups of often unlikable people, but something about it instantly soothes me. My fists unclench, my muscles unknot, and my mind clears, and for that hour and a half to two hours, I know true peace.
I've felt desperately in need of this type of comfort lately. It's a little bit the brutal heat, something I've complained about too many times already, and a little bit my battered heart, and a little bit the approaching Fourth of July and its accompanying fireworks, but it's mostly my body. I have lupus, and previously my symptoms had been mostly in check, only mildly inconveniencing me and successfully managed by medication, until this year. Until this summer. Now, I'm stiff and achy more often than I'm not, and I'm exhausted, and my brain fog has steadily increased in severity. I forget things so often. So, so often. And this is not to mention my nails, which are thin and brittle and covered in ridges and break constantly. Having my nails done used to be one of my greatest pleasures in life and now it feels pointless. A lot of things feel pointless.
It's so deeply unfair that my body is betraying me this way just as I'm realizing what it can feel, the things it's capable of. I no longer hate inhabiting this flesh prison quite the way I used to and I feel an ownership over my physical self that I've never experienced before. And as I'm learning to love myself in this new way, as I'm learning that I can expect love from others for this part of myself that I had always longed to shed, my body has said an emphatic fuck you to all of my soft, warm feelings toward it.
It's a lot to come to terms with. Not only do I have a primary disability, blindness, and not only do I have some sort of neurodivergence and queerness to contend with, but I also have to have a chronic illness. And if that wasn't all bad enough, now I have to feel that chronic illness on a new and painful level. My body is not in my control and never has been. I cannot be normal. Nothing can be easy. When I wrote in a poem fragment a few years ago, "What is the body but a collection of traumas," I meant it differently, in another context, but it still resonates today. My body and I are not friends.
Maybe this is why I love slashers. Maybe, as disturbing as it sounds, there's something healing for me in watching other bodies being brutalized. It's not the same as what has happened or is happening to me, but maybe it makes me feel better to experience others suffering in their bodies too. Or maybe there's something in watching these movies that relaxes me because it's not happening to me. I can immerse myself in horror safe in the knowledge that at least I'm not those characters. At least their traumas aren't happening to me. Things might be bad, but they're not that bad. I don't like torture porn, which is a separate thing. Prolonged scenes of violence don't really work for me. I like slashers because the violence is usually quick and bloody and then we move right along to the next thing.
Scream is my favorite movie of all time. Not just my favorite horror movie, but of any genre. I love it. It's so funny and smart and occasionally genuinely scary and endlessly quotable and the characters are actually likable and nothing, not a single thing, can instantly lift my mood the way it can. No amount of rewatches will ever be too many. The rest of the franchise varies wildly in quality and it doesn't all hold up, but I'll show up for all of it until they bleed it dry and finally have to move on, and I'll find things to love in every installment, even if I don't stand by an entire movie.
Scream aside, I tend to prefer supernatural slashers, a la the original A Nightmare on Elm Street and Child's Play and Candyman and the Fear Street trilogy and the 2018 Halloween, which I controversially prefer over the original. It's easier for me to sink into the over the top absurdity and buy into the heightened reality if the villains have a mythical quality to them. It's also easier for me to have fun with the deaths if they're perpetrated by someone with extraordinary powers, someone who is a little more than human. I don't need to be reminded of the ugliness of humanity and the cruelties we can inflict on one another. And part of what draws me to slashers is the creativity of the kills, the wild methods movie creators can think of to dispatch their characters, and I believe that's best exemplified by killers with supernatural abilities. I just watched In a Violent Nature, which wasn't my favorite movie and probably won't make it onto my list of comfort rewatches, but it had some outstanding deaths and was at least trying to do something different. I recommend it, even if only to see once, if you can handle the violence level. It was a lot and I cringed and said "ew" and "oh God" out loud many times.
That said, there are also plenty of slashers that are more grounded in reality that I still enjoy. X is my favorite of those in recent memory. I loved it so, so much. It's very rewatchable, with characters who really endear themselves to you and make you root for their survival in a relatively short time, and the villains are oddly sympathetic even while being a little bit repulsive, and the frank discussions about sexuality are fun and refreshing. I would have watched a whole movie that was just about the group of pornographers hanging out together talking and playing music and making porn.
The original Black Christmas from 1974 is another one with lovable characters who actually have thoughts and feelings and fleshed out lives, and a very disturbing villain who manages to be scary without ever being seen. It's on the less gory side of the subgenre, but it's still very engrossing and entertaining and it's a must watch in this house every Christmas.
Last week I watched You're Next for the first time and while it wasn't outstanding, it was a great time. I wasn't sure about it because it's a home invasion movie and that's a huge anxiety trigger of mine, but it was so much fun. The dysfunctional family dynamics were perfect and Erin was a phenomenal final girl and someone took a blender to the brain, which is exactly what I go to slashers for.
I don't do a lot of horror comedies because the humor rarely hits the way I want it to, but Happy Death Day is one I did enjoy and The Final Girls is another one I watched last week and instantly added to the comfort list. They both have a lot of heart and love for the genre to ground them and they both made me laugh, and I recommend The Final Girls especially because it's truly delightful. I also loved and recommend Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, even though I haven't seen it in years and never with audio description. I'm a big fan of meta horror, obviously, given Scream being my favorite.
I could go on, and I would, if this wasn't already getting too long. Slashers are my favorite subgenre, tied with demonic possession, and I enjoy the bad as well as the good. Urban Legend, anybody? Sometimes it's about making myself feel better about my own situation, sometimes it's about identifying with the characters and experiencing controlled anxiety in a way where I know I'm safe and I'll be fine when it ends, and sometimes it's not that deep and it's just about distraction. Sometimes it's about buckets of blood and paper thin characters and unstoppable villains creating mayhem. Sometimes it's about laughing at terrible dialogue and hating the protagonists so much that I root for their deaths and celebrate when they happen. The formulaic nature of slashers is part of it too. There are rarely surprises and they tend to follow the same beats and employ the same tropes and I usually know what to expect. I can't explain why this is all so appealing if you don't already understand, but it is, and there's no shortage of these movies. There's a kind of connectedness in that, in the knowledge that a whole community of other people love them too, sometimes so much that they write and direct and act in them and then put them out for us all to enjoy.
Aside from this, New Girl and Lifetime movies are my primary sources of comfort media. And podcasts, which I've already written about. What are yours? I would love to know what you reach for when you need to unwind, unplug, and stop existing in your own life for a while.