The Devil Inside wasn't scary. So here's a list of things that are.

I like scary movies.


I’m not talking about the crazily gruesome Saw/Human Centipede variety. You couldn’t pay me to watch those.

But genuine horror movies, when done well, are awesome.

A good horror movie doesn’t just make you jump during the film—it does that too, don’t get me wrong—but a REALLY good horror movie will keep you scared LONG after you leave the theater. If you’re not cowering under the covers with the lights on for a week, the movie didn’t do its job.

Stephen King is, of course, the master of horror. The movies of his books didn’t really scare me, but I’m still haunted by some of his creations. I first read The Shining when I was twelve years old, and to this day, I STILL have to turn on the lights when I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night to make sure that the chick from the bathtub in room 217 isn’t in MY bathtub.

Paranormal Activity didn’t scare me THAT much until my calendar fell off the wall about an hour after watching it. But it succeeded because I definitely debated putting baby powder around my bed to see if a demon stepped in it that night, and made Rosie sleep on the outside of the bed, just so the demon would eat her first.

The same thing happened with The Ring. I wasn’t particularly scared at the time. But when I fell asleep with the tv on a week later and woke up that night to snow on the screen, then realized it was EXACTLY seven days after I’d watched the movie, I went diving into my roommate’s room and insisted on sleeping in her bed. Turns out the cable was just out, but I wasn’t taking any chances!

But there’s nothing worse than a failure of a horror movie.

Trust me. I know from experience.

Because I saw The Devil Inside Friday night and it was the second worst movie-going experience of my life. The first being having to watch the anal rape scene in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo sitting between my mother and grandmother on Christmas day. Seriously. It was up there with THAT level of bad.

The problem? There wasn’t a single truly scary moment in the whole movie.

Literally, the scariest thing that happened in it was when the characters walk past a fenced-in yard and a dog jumps out and starts barking from behind the fence.

I’m not kidding.

And considering that the previews looked super-scary, I don’t understand how it can have epic-failed as much as it did.


People in the theater actually booed when it ended. I’ve never seen that happen before.

I could summarize all of the reasons why it completely sucked, but I’m not even going to dignify the movie with that level of description. Instead, I’m going to give you a list of things that scare me MORE than The Devil Inside.

1. Stink bugs—I almost crashed my car on four separate occasions when I noticed stink bugs in my car. MUCH scarier than that movie.

2. ET—That little alien scares the crap out of me. I mean, he appears to me made of brown leather, his heart glows, he hides in your closet and eats all of the Reese's Pieces. NOT okay.

3. Twilight fans—these tweens are going to be running the world someday. Be afraid.

4. Joan Rivers’ face—do I need to explain this one?

5. Lady Gaga—I like her. I do. But I'm also scared of her.

6. Peeing on the third rail of the Metro—granted, I’m a girl and would have to literally be right on top of it to try this, and I have no intention of ever doing it. But if you really COULD get electrocuted from peeing on it, that’s scary as hell.

7. Cats—pure unadulterated evil. Except the ones that look like Hitler. They’re ok in my book.

8. Walt Disney’s frozen head—okay, say they find a cure for whatever killed him and bring him back. He’s just going to be a semi-defrosted head. I think if you’re dead, you need to stay dead. And if you’re frozen, STAY FROZEN.

9. The MVA—Call me sheltered if you will, but I never realized the scum of humanity that exists until I went to renew my driver’s license. I’d stay in the Overlook all alone for the winter over going back there, ANY day.

10. Those condoms that are advertised as being 40 percent thinner—I don’t know about you, but when it comes to something that’s supposed to be protection against AIDS, less is NOT more. I feel like if you use those, to quote Mean Girls, you WILL get pregnant and die.


11. The old ladies who walk around buck naked in the gym locker room—Like okay, I understand you need to change your clothes in there. But do you need to dry your hair naked? Or try to have a conversation with me? It’s disturbing!

12. The lion and tiger habitats at the zoo—every once in awhile, you hear those stories about the jungle cats just deciding to leap over the wall. And I know they can. So the lesson here is, do NOT taunt the tigers. They CAN eat you if they want to.

13. Walmart—I’ve never been there and I have no intention of going there. But looking at peopleofwalmart.com means that I know Walmart is scarier than that movie was.

14. The Loch Ness Monster.

15. Pennies--No, they’re not scary. But neither was The Devil Inside.  Then again, my brother swallowed one once.  So next time you're handing a penny, just remember, someone might have pooped that out before you touched it.  Come to think of it, that's pretty scary.  And gross.

16. The fact that someone actually green-lit this idiocy of a script and MADE THIS MOVIE. Seriously. Our society has reached an all-time low point now.

All I can say is the The Woman in Black better be actually scary, despite starring Harry Potter. Because I’m planning to see that one, and if it’s even half as bad as The Devil Inside, the creators of those movies are going to have something REALLY scary to fear.

Me.

Because I want a refund on both the money AND the time I wasted watching that crap.

Horror movies don't scare me... as long as my closet door is shut!

I love horror movies, but my problem is that I always think I’m brave enough to watch them when I’m home alone.

I’m not.

Yet I never seem to learn my lesson about this.

The most recent one to cause problems was Paranormal Activity. The movie itself didn’t scare me. I watched the whole thing and only had to look away once, at the very end.

No problem.

Then I got ready to go to bed that night. And as I was turning off all the lights, my calendar fell off the wall in the kitchen. It had never done that before. Now rationally, I know that because it was the beginning of the month and I had just changed the page, I must have done a poor job securing it to the wall. But at 2am, when the calendar fell, I knew it was the work of a demon that was coming to steal my soul.

So as I cowered in bed that night, I made sure that I had taken the necessary precautions. First of all, Rosie, my puppy, had to sleep on the side of the bed closest to the door. I was pretty sure that if anything, human or otherwise, entered my room, she would let me know. Not because she would bark, but because she would want it to pet her. Rosie can’t see anything, adult, child, mailman, dog, cat, tree, fruit fly, etc. without wanting it to pet her. A demon would be no different.

And worst case scenario, the demon would eat her first.

(No, I’m not proud of that.)

Next, I had to make sure that my covers came up over my ears. It’s one of those things from childhood. I can’t explain it. If my ears are covered, the monsters can’t get me. It’s just the way it is. Don’t ask me why I’m safe if my ears are covered, ask the monsters. It’s THEIR rule after all.

And finally, my closet door had to be firmly shut. Of course, my closet door has to be firmly shut EVERY night before I can go to sleep. Because then the boogeyman/monster/serial killer with an axe/evil monkey/clown doll/demon/whatever else is hiding in there can’t get out. It’s a known fact. Psycho killers and paranormal creatures that hide in closets can’t open the closet doors from the inside. Again, you’d have to ask them why it works this way.

I thought about putting baby powder around my bed, like in the movie, to see if anything left footprints. But as I tried in vain to fall asleep, I realized something: if there WAS in fact a demon in my house, it had never bothered me before. And if it wasn’t bothering me, I just didn’t want to know about it. So I said goodnight to the demon and went to sleep.

(I’m lying. I didn’t say goodnight to it. Because if anything said goodnight back to me, I would never sleep again. But I THOUGHT about saying goodnight to it, and it’s the thought that counts. If there IS a demon, I don’t want him to think that I’m rude!)

Sadly, this wasn’t an isolated occurrence. Every time I watch a horror movie, I’m convinced that whatever scary element featured in the movie is waiting for me in my apartment as soon as I turn off the lights. I know this is statistically unlikely. Why would a ghost just HAPPEN to show up the night that I watched a movie about one? Why would Jason be in my closet the same night that I watched Friday the 13th as opposed to any other night? It makes no sense. If something wanted to kill me, why would it wait until I knew about it?

And I know that the fact that I fell asleep with the tv on one week after watching The Ring was a coincidence. So was the cable going out that night, which caused me to wake up to static on the screen. A horrible, horrible coincidence that led to me crying hysterically and sleeping with a canister of pepper spray for a week in case the chick from the movie tried to crawl through my tv and kill me. Not that pepper spray would do much against her. But it made me feel a little better.

There are also some horror movies that I DO know I’m just not brave enough to watch. I have never actually seen the clown doll scene in Poltergeist. I can’t do it. I’ve tried. But I can’t. I’ve gotten to the point where he covers the doll with his jacket, then the jacket is gone, and I’ve made it as far (once or twice) as when the kid looks at the chair and the doll is gone, but I CANNOT get past that part. I know the kid lives, so clearly the clown doll doesn’t win. But I still can’t handle watching whatever DOES happen. And yes, I know that because it’s an ’80s movie, it’s probably something cheesy with horrible special effects. I still can’t do it.

Another one that always gets me is The Shining. I love that movie, but to this day, I can’t look at the bathtub if I wake up in the middle of the night, because I worry that the chick from the Shining will be in there. And everyone knows, that wasn’t the scariest thing in the Shining.

No, I don’t mean the creepy hallway twins either.

I mean the tacky 1970s interiors of that hotel. No wonder Jack Nicholson goes crazy and kills people. Wouldn’t you, if you were stuck in THAT hotel for a winter? I’m pretty sure I’d pick up an axe after ten minutes.

The biggest problem for me though is that the morning after I watch a horror movie, I laugh at myself for being scared. Then I always think I can handle the next one. And I’m always wrong.

But at least I’m safe as long as my closet door is shut.