Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Do not enter 1408

The specialty of horror movies is that you don’t have to think logically. A bleeding hand can drop blood for miles and a body can walk without heads and a dead body which walks without any heart or brain will die if you punch the face. As soon as the movie starts, you must understand that you cannot point your fingers and ask the question "why?". It is all covered in the disclaimer reading it is all imagination only. Probably imagining in a way, things cannot happen and most importantly things you don’t want to happen.
Given a glimpse about horror movies, I had avoided them a lot in my childhood for various reasons. The most obvious one is the nightmares in which I would either be chatting with the headless rider or using the hands of an undead to play cricket. You will never realize the gruesome in the dream. It is always at the time before you wake up; you would realize that it is difficult to hit the ball holding someone's hand for a bat as the wrist would bend leaving the ball straight to the stumps. But before you realize that, you will wake up with the real terror that you are holding a dead hand in your nightmare. Still I would boast to everyone that I have seen every horror movie that is released including ET, the scariest film ever made. It was not until my higher secondary school that I got to know ET was a kid's film. But luckily all my class mates had the thought that Batman is the scariest movie. So they couldn't object anything I said. With childhood passed with just stories about horror movies, I got a liking for horror stories later.
Evil dead, Omen and Exorcist became favorites very soon.
The most important I like in horror movies is that though its always blood you are going to see, you should appreciate the effort in which the director tries to be creative in showing how the blood splashes out. But I do feel sick if the director crossing his imagination boundaries and gets over enthusiastic in showing blood all over the screen including the actor's face. And obviously I hate flesh-eating undead creatures which is seen in most of the horror movies. I think the feeling was common with the audience that the blood-thirsty horror movies stopped appearing slowly. Then there came the thrillers with paranormal activities like "The Ring" which was much scarier than any other blood thirsty beasts. I still remember watching "The Ring" in the hostel at night. By the time the movie was over, it was 10 PM and the mobile started ringing. We switched off the mobiles for the whole night for some other reasons...
The interest also moved to reading scary novels especially by Stephen King. It was the cover of the book and the confusion between Stephen King and Stephen Hawking that made me buy the book. The first book I read was "Pet Sematary" which literally made me curious about evil nature of cats. I have always felt something strange about cats. They look as if they know something that you don’t know. And at nights if you shoot a torch light on them, they will stare back at you, turn their head and walk away slowly. Pet Sematary was the best book I have read so far from Stephen King. Other books I have read include "Salem's lot", "The Plant" and "The Sun Dog". His books are always helpful in two other ways; you can skip dozen pages without losing the plot; and you can use it as a pillow. It is very large all the time. But the horror it imposes on you is bone-chilling. Especially he has the knack of creating a perfectly tragic ending. Did you ever imagine the ending of "The Fog" before? I am sure you would have used either of the two four-lettered words.
I had even thought of writing a horror story on my own, but then let the world survive for some more time before that horrific event can happen. If you are wondering why the post is titled so, "1408" is the name of the new movie based upon Stephen King's short story. It’s definitely not for the faint hearted. So do not enter the room 1408 unless you are ready to face your worst nightmare. No wonder it is now added to my favorites.

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