Sometimes I realize my kids are more sheltered than their peers. At 15 my older son has never seen a horror movie. In the past he has been sensitive about visual scenes, he is so visual, and is almost photogenic in his memory so bad things he sees replay in his mind over and over and have caused problem when he was little.
I had started seeing horror movies by 15. I remember liking the anticipation and suspense and loving screaming out loud in the movie theatre with my teen girlfriends. We would cringe and hide our eyes behind our hands then peek out. That silly entertainment did not mean we liked or agreed with murder. We knew it was fake Hollywood entertainment.
I decided to let my son watch a horror movie with me the other day. I honestly have not watched one since I was a teen and that was over 25 years ago. I had no clue what today's films are like.
One that was free on our cable On Demand service was Don't Go Into the Woods (2010). We thought it was a slow movie and low on action. A rock band went into the woods so they could be in isolation (and sober) in order to write new music. They start getting murdered off one by one but it was really slow going. All through the movie the band writes new songs and they are sung solo or as a group. The hilarious part is the girlfriends who crash the weekend walk around and sing a capella, the song they just heard for the first time. It was really goofy and ridiculous and almost painful to watch. You know it's bad when a person leaves the room and says, "If something good happens tell me and we'll rewind it."
Most of the murders are right at the end and then it quickly ends. We predicted who the murderer was accurately.
It was not as gory as my memory recalls from Halloween and the like.
My son decided it was a bad horror comedy musical (a new genre to both of us) and it was laughable.
We never felt any of the dread and suspense that I thought the stuff of horror movies was made of.