A scary movie is not an effective distraction after all
I got some very sad news yesterday - a friend of mine died. It wasn't unexpected - she'd been sick with pancreatic cancer for over two years - but that doesn't make it much easier to accept. I'll write a post about her later this week - right now I'm still too upset to come up with anything much more coherent than "Cancer sucks!" and "Seriously God - WTF???"
So today I very much wanted to distract myself from being sad - I did some cleaning and watched some old Brady Bunch episodes on TV, and then I remembered that I have "The Woman In Black" from Netflix. I love a good scary movie (scary like creepy, spooky scary, not like Jason, Saw, brutally torture everyone scary), so I figured it would be a good way to occupy my mind for a bit.
You guys - this was the scariest movie I've seen since.......I honestly can't think of another movie that scared me this much. I am so glad I watched it during the day, because if I'd watched it after dark I don't think I'd ever sleep again. Seriously - there was one scene where I literally jumped out of my chair and screamed in terror. I had to pause the movie halfway through to get a grip on myself! After I calmed down and went back to watching it, I went into some kind of fandom-confusion meltdown and started yelling "Get the salt, Harry!!!" at my TV, but he didn't listen.
I don't remember hearing much about this movie when it came out - I remembered the previews looked pretty creepy and it had Harry Potter in it, so I knew I'd be watching it at some point. I don't remember hearing much about it being ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING. I looked up a few reviews online, and apparently not everyone shared my take on this film - a lot of reviews said it wasn't very scary, moved too slowly and was too quiet. That's the point! Half the scenes are of the main character alone in a haunted mansion; it could have been really boring if it hadn't been done right, but I thought Daniel Radcliffe did a really good job of carrying all the solo scenes, and I loved that the director was willing to take the time to slowly build up the tension (until I almost had a heart attack).
Unfortunately the movie was also very sad and included a number of tragic scenes, so it didn't really distract me from my sadness as I'd hoped. It might be time to break out the Monty Python videos.
So today I very much wanted to distract myself from being sad - I did some cleaning and watched some old Brady Bunch episodes on TV, and then I remembered that I have "The Woman In Black" from Netflix. I love a good scary movie (scary like creepy, spooky scary, not like Jason, Saw, brutally torture everyone scary), so I figured it would be a good way to occupy my mind for a bit.
You guys - this was the scariest movie I've seen since.......I honestly can't think of another movie that scared me this much. I am so glad I watched it during the day, because if I'd watched it after dark I don't think I'd ever sleep again. Seriously - there was one scene where I literally jumped out of my chair and screamed in terror. I had to pause the movie halfway through to get a grip on myself! After I calmed down and went back to watching it, I went into some kind of fandom-confusion meltdown and started yelling "Get the salt, Harry!!!" at my TV, but he didn't listen.
I don't remember hearing much about this movie when it came out - I remembered the previews looked pretty creepy and it had Harry Potter in it, so I knew I'd be watching it at some point. I don't remember hearing much about it being ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING. I looked up a few reviews online, and apparently not everyone shared my take on this film - a lot of reviews said it wasn't very scary, moved too slowly and was too quiet. That's the point! Half the scenes are of the main character alone in a haunted mansion; it could have been really boring if it hadn't been done right, but I thought Daniel Radcliffe did a really good job of carrying all the solo scenes, and I loved that the director was willing to take the time to slowly build up the tension (until I almost had a heart attack).
Unfortunately the movie was also very sad and included a number of tragic scenes, so it didn't really distract me from my sadness as I'd hoped. It might be time to break out the Monty Python videos.