Coming Up Roses

I am so stoked about how things are going lately.

I'm almost finished with the whole thesis process. My experiment and paper are officially complete. On Tuesday, I defend, and I'm anticipating that will go well and be fairly easy. After I have everything verified, I submit my thesis to the Graduate Department and am essentially done (save for possible formatting corrections and physical publication). So after this week, I will have significantly less stress and significantly more free time. Perfect timing for:

Warmer weather and more sunshine! I never thought I'd miss the sun living in Southern California, but I'm tired of trying to tweak my wardrobe for 40 minute walks through rain (to be fair, those walks will end after this week also!). I'm looking forward to some swimming, some camping, and seeing some friends who have been away at school. I'm also going to scrape some money together to buy one of the new bathing suits I've been looking at.

And I'll have the money to buy a new bathing suit since I'll start giving independent tutoring after next week. It's something I've thought about for a long time but never felt confident in actually doing. I mean, why would I assume I can explain things any better than a teacher or a text book? But after a long conversation with my parents (my mom is a teacher) this week, I feel much more capable and, frankly, marketable. Luckily, this is the one area where I actually have a contact who can help me get clients so I feel pretty good about getting work, too.

Things have been going well in the garden. I managed to save two sunflowers from becoming a bug's lunch and a third is struggling to come back to life. I have a fourth sunflower and one zinnia growing in my bug-free nursery and I'll be planting more seeds in a few weeks so we should have some nice annual additions this year. The roses we planted a couple months ago are all healthy and blooming already - pretty amazing when I think back on how they looked as bare root plants when we bought them. I also finally have a strawberry turning red before anything (bug or dog) managed to eat it.

Lastly, with my work on my thesis winding down, I've had more time for reading and music. I am most excited about finally installing iTunes on my new computer last month and this month I have a pretty substantial library to enjoy while I'm cruising the internet. I also went to a few used book stores and found some amazing books that I have been wanting to read for years. I started Women Who Run With The Wolves this week and I love Dr. Estes' writing. It tends to put me in another state of mind, which, admittedly, I don't think I'll be quite ready for until after this next week of thesis work.

All in all, things are looking good and I'm pretty excited about the progress happening in all these areas of my life.

Unfortunately, it looks like I'll have a lot of unintended downtime over the next week. Not having a job and not having control over my thesis progress is making me stressed out and antsy. I want to complete something. I want to have some feeling of moving forward in life and of my life having some value.

I'd like to be able to have a few potentially marketable skills, and I don't mean marketable in the theoretical sense; I want to be able to do something tangible. I already know a little about repairing small electronics but I'd like to learn enough to get paid for repairs. I'd also like to learn another area of repairs - maybe small motors or automotive A/C.

I'm also still working on languages, but I've put Arabic on hold in favor of reviewing the languages I already have some knowledge of: Spanish, Irish, Russian, and ASL. I'm surprised at both how much Spanish I actually at one point knew and how much I've forgotten.

I haven't had much interest in reading lately since stress has been making it difficult to focus on any books, but maybe I'll once again start my independent study of film and music of the 60s and 70s, which I stopped formally doing six years ago.

Ughhhhhhh. I just need to do something to keep myself busy.

Learning Arabic

This post should probably be about the new social sciences podcast I've been working on, since that's probably the coolest and most interesting news I have, but I'll leave that to a later date. Right now, I am super excited to start learning Arabic so I want to get all this off my chest.

As of yesterday, I decided I would start learning Arabic. I don't have a specific reason for choosing the language other than I like the way it sounds and it seems like it might be one of the more useful languages to know. Previously, I've tried to learn Spanish, which was a seven year battle throughout high school and college that left me knowing a ton of vocabulary and verb conjugations but not having the confidence to hold even basic conversations. I also have used Rosetta Stone to learn Russian and, while I really liked the program, purchasing additional levels was way too expensive for me and, though I had mastered many phrases, I felt impossibly far from being fluent from the levels I had completed.

So then, yesterday, I decided I'd try to learn Mandarin. For free. Because with the internet, anything is possible, RIGHT? After listening to some lessons on an app I downloaded, however, I wasn't having it. It just sounded too...foreign, for lack of a better word. I want to learn Chinese someday, but while I'm trying my free internet approach, I decided I'd go with Arabic. If I'm going to be listening to podcasts I can't understand, I want them to at least be melodic. And Arabic is nothing if not melodic.

So here's my strategy: Each day I will listen to Arabic podcasts, like BBC Xtra, just to get myself used to hearing Arabic. I've read that one theory of language learning posits we should first spend time just listening to a new language before we try to speak it. I'm also looking for free online resources to eventually help me build my vocabulary and learn to read. Here's what I've found so far:

Madinah Arabic - I'm so impressed by the amount and quality of free resources available on this website. Right now I'm just focusing on learning the alphabet, but I've looked ahead to the vocabulary lessons and they resemble the Rosetta Stone method of pairing words (both written and spoken) with images (instead of just the English translations). So again, I'm really impressed that everything is free. Whoever runs the site is doing a great service to a lot of people.

ArabicPod101.com - The site name is a little spammy and frankly the site itself is a little spammy too. You have to give your email to access the material and there are lots of ads begging you to upgrade to a premium account. Once you get past that stuff though, the free lessons are fantastic. They cover not only useful conversational phrases, but also aspects of Middle Eastern culture and social customs. Plus, the lessons are available for download so I can listen to them in my car. I don't know what comes with the premium subscription, but so far, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by not having it.

Learn Arabic with Maha - So far I've only watched Maha's Beginner Lessons. They're short and simple, focusing on just a few phrases per video. I'm led to believe her lessons get pretty advanced, though, so I'm happy I'll be able to stick with the same "teacher" throughout most of my learning journey. And Maha's charismatic and fun, so it's easy to pay attention to her lessons.

Learn Arabic App from AppVerx Limited - There aren't a lot of good, free mobile language learning apps out there but this is one of the best I've seen. The company only makes two language apps and I was lucky one was Arabic. There's a lot of information available and good audio samples so this app will keep me busy for a while.

If I discover more free resources, I'll post them later. I don't expect to become fluent using only the internet, but I'd like to have some intermediate conversational skills so I could eventually Skype with native speakers. If you have any suggestions or resources, I'd love to hear them!

Lastly, I'm going to see how far I can get in three months. This guy claims I can become fluent in that time and while I'm not too sure about that, I would like this to be a more rapid and successful journey than learning Spanish was.

Hockey and Music Blogging

Let's be honest with each other: I never really pay any attention to this blog. And judging from the comments I've gotten in the past few months, Blogger seems to be getting a little spammy. Regardless, I figured I'd make an update because I'm here at home tonight while Rob is at the Anaheim Ducks game against the Predators. I am super jealous of him since there will be two guys in the game tonight who played on my college's hockey team while I was going to school there: Colin Wilson and Brandon Yip on the Predators. Nick Bonino, who started playing for my alma mater a year after I graduated, will also be in the game for the Ducks. Rob also got to go to this game for free so, needless to say, I am angry-jealous.

On the thesis front, I am disappointed to report that the battle is not yet over and I will be struggling with this monster for another semester. I'm trying to stay positive and hoping to find a job close to school so I won't have to keep dealing with this weird commute/hotel situation. And I need a job period.

I've been keeping busy over the winter break with some music blogging (thealbumexperience.wordpress.com) and much-needed family time (and dog time!). After winning three of my fantasy football championships, I decided it wouldn't hurt to join some free fantasy hockey leagues. A year ago my brain would have gone into Theta waves at the mention of fantasy hockey but this year I ended up managing seven teams. I can't do anything in moderation. I can't say I've gotten the hang of it yet but it's only the first week and I'm actually winning one of my head-to-head games. We shall see how it all pans out.

Fantasy 2012 Week 17 Championship

If you're like me and you carelessly signed up for a fantasy league with championships that extend into Week 17, you may be facing the possibility of your star players sitting out at a time when you need them most. Here's a rundown of what's happening in the NFL, which teams have the most at stake, and which players might not see playing time.

In the AFC the Broncos and the Texans will be playing for Homefield Advantage. Denver is playing Kansas City, though, so if the Broncos get ahead early, they're likely to take out their starters and save them for the playoffs. Houston is going up against Indianapolis and that should be a better game so their starters will probably generate more points for you.

The Patriots, Ravens, Colts, and Bengals have all clinched playoff spots with no threat of losing them in Week 17. This means their key players are likely to sit out to rest and avoid risk of injury going into the playoffs. If you have a big name player from one of these teams, don't count on them to put up big (or any) numbers for you this week. Start looking for backups.

In the NFC, things are more interesting. No NFC East team has clinched a playoff spot yet. If Washington loses, the Giants have a chance to clinch the Division. The Giants are going up against the Eagles at 1:00 and will likely sit out starters only toward the tail end of the game and only if they have a significant lead. This is an important game for the Giants so don't discount their players. If the Giants lose, the Redskins will likely sit their starters for their 8:20 game. If the Giants win, the Redskins need to beat the Cowboys to maintain their Division Title. In other words, if you have guys on the Redskins, pay attention to the Giants game, as that will determine the likelihood of the Redskins' starters playing.

The Falcons have clinched a playoff spot and Homefield Advantage so their starters aren't likely to see playing time. The Packers have also clinched a playoff spot so again, don't count on their starters to generate any points for you.

Elsewhere in the Conference, the 49ers and the Seahawks are competing for the NFC West Division Title but both teams will make it into the playoffs no matter what, as one will come away with a Wild Card spot. The other Wild Card in the Conference could go to either the Redskins, the Vikings, or the Bears. The Redskins will only get a Wild Card spot if they lose their game and the Vikings and the Bears lose their games. Whether or not the Redskins lose, the Vikings and the Bears will both have a shot at the second Wild Card spot. The Vikings will be going up against Green Bay, who likely won't have their starters in.

So what does this all mean? It means that if you have players on:
The Patriots
The Ravens
The Colts
The Bengals
The Falcons
The Packers
there's a strong possibility they will see limited playing time and might not be good starting options in your championship game.

My picks for teams that are going to be playing hard, putting up good numbers, and not sitting their starters are:
The Giants
The Vikings
The Bears
The Redskins (if the Giants win)

Ultimately, your decision on whether or not to put in second-string players is going to depend on who you have on your bench and who is a Free Agent or on Waivers in your league. Also, it is early in the week, so stay updated on fantasy news to make sure my information is accurate.

Dewar's is My Scotch of Choice, If I Drank Scotch

I think this is the first commercial I've seen on TV that I really felt was marketing alcohol to my demographic (whatever that demographic is - women? feminists? everyone who is not a 25 year old hetero white man?). I can't say I've ever had Dewar's, but the next time I buy Scotch (probably never), I'll definitely be considering their brand. Because this commercial is apparently super effective:

So many things I love about this woman! She's wearing minimal makeup, an extreme rarity for women on TV, especially in commercials. She's not under 25. She's not dressed in a particularly provocative way, like a tight shirt straining against her breasts, which is what any woman who is ever around a light beer seems to always be wearing. Also, she's so powerful and confident! She doesn't smile for your benefit! She doesn't need mixed drinks! And she does a spot-on role reversal, condescendingly sending some unseen male back to bed. Because it's time for the people with Real Responsibilities and Important Things on their minds to have their end-of-a-hard-day Scotch. And Angus, whoever you are, you are clearly not one of those people. This lady is my head-of-the-household role model for life. (Along with Beyonce.)

Finally, check out the full version of the commercial, which is SOMEHOW EVEN COOLER:

Cheers, Dewar's. Good job.

Short Essays on My Favorite Horror Films

It's Halloween. Around this time of year, when darkness cuts into half the time I spend awake and reruns of every movie in the Halloween series clog cable TV, I start to think about what really scares me. It isn't gore; it seems like moviegoers often confuse disgust with fear. It also isn't the startle factor of ugly images popping up on screen. In discussing some of my favorite scary films, I'm going to try to figure out which elements really make me feel horrified. The following are some of my favorite "horror" films, in no particular order with short essays on what makes each of them terrifying to me.

Traditional Horror

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

One of the earliest "slasher" films, or even a precursor to that genre (depending who you ask), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the only such film I've seen that has truly creeped me out. The serial killing and gruesome deaths don't get to me as much as the familial perversion - the group desire for carnage and cannibalism. I was about 14 or 15 when I first saw the film. My best friend was spending the night and I lived in a relatively rural, sparsely populated area with neighbors who were known to be crazy and aggressive. After the movie was over, we were both legitimately terrified by the possibility of a real-life version of Leatherface's family living nearby. We couldn't sleep at all. Every time a dog or coyote howled, we jumped in terrified certainty that some depravity of humanity was coming for us. What made, and still makes, this movie so scary to me is the thought that someone could, feasibly, with training and an intelligence level similar to Leatherface's, become an unwitting killing machine. And people are weird. People do all kinds of messed up stuff to their kids and teach them all kinds of weird things. You know, like in Frailty.To add to that, while one psychopathic monster might be conquerable, an entire family of crazies enabling each other is pretty hard to overcome. Especially when even the strangers you turn to for help don't have your best interests in mind. Look at movies like Deliverance, or even White Lightnin' and Winter's Bone. People in backwards, isolated places get crazy and dangerous and they kill people. And it's just par for the course. When the humanity of not just one person, but of an entire family, gets degraded to the point of murder for sport and food, that's pretty horrifying. For that reason, House of 1000 Corpses was no less terrifying, despite it's similarity to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That's not behavior I can get acclimated to.

For more crazy family bizarreness:

Spider Baby (1964)

Admittedly more of a camp-fest than a horror film, Spider Baby nonetheless contains a lot of weird family members again enabling each other to be totally not socially appropriate. And cannibalism. And basement-dwelling people, which totally get me every time. (Though I don't consider it to be a horror film, check out The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, where Jodie Foster has a sort of dungeon family of her own.) There is, again, a lot of depravity of human nature, though this time it has an alleged genetic cause. What the movie lacks in atmosphere and effective suspense it makes up for in sheer outrageousness, leading me to wonder just how insane the writer and director, Jack Hill, might be himself. Also, keep an eye out for Sid Haig. That's right. Sid Haig of House of 1000 Corpses Captain Spaulding fame. It's all starting to come together.

The Shining (1980)
I think most of us can agree that The Shining is a pretty darn creepy film. I'm no fan of Stephen King and even less a fan of his mostly innocuous magical-slice-of-life stories (that, admittedly, often get turned into pretty legit horror films). The Shining as a novel is more about alcoholism, topiaries, and a magical negro a la John Coffey in The Green Mile. But Stanley Kubrick evolved all these otherwise goofy details into an incredibly sinister and tense whole where the distinction between madness and the supernatural becomes blurred into something malicious, rather than mystical. One of the reasons The Shining is so effective is the same reason it used to irk me a bit as a teenager: there is so much left unsaid. The hotel is haunted, yeah, I get it. But how do all these strange images come together to make a coherent story? They don't. That's what's so unsettling. And this movie contains the single most heart-stoppingly terrifying scene I have ever seen in any film ever. You're following Shelley Duvall's journey up a staircase at a weird angle. The genius soundtrack is incorporating these demonic chanting noises. There's a room at the end of the hallway and you don't want to look in because you know what terrible things are in these hotel rooms. Shelley Duvall's at the farthest edge of terror; she can't get any more scared. Something weird is going on in that room and you don't want to know what it is. But the camera forces you to see, zooming in cruelly on two faces staring back at you, TOTALLY BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL. LIKE THEY CAN ACTUALLY SEE YOU, THE VIEWER! You stare at them, they stare at you. The room is dim and your brain can't react quickly enough to process what you're seeing. Then it's over, but you know what you saw. Shelley Duvall saw it too. Somehow you and a character on your TV/movie/computer screen just stumbled upon the same thing - something neither one of you were meant to see. Too intense. Stephen King, by the way, "remembers hating" this film.

The Orphanage/El Orfanato (2007)
The Orphanage is filled with all kinds of creepy images: burlap sacks over heads, dolls where babies should be, the bones of murdered children. The protagonist, Laura, loses her son and must piece together a series of supernatural clues in order to find him. There are some pretty scary scenes, which include mysterious noises in an old house, a (possible) ghost child playing hide-and-seek, and a total twist of fate for a suspect old lady, but the creepiest parts of the film are the things you discover when the mysteries are solved.

Burnt Offerings (1976)
A year before Stephen King wrote The Shining, a movie came out about a couple and their son who house-sit an evil-spirit-possessed mansion. One of the reasons Burnt Offerings is so interesting is that it contains so many elements that reappear in later movies. There's a mysterious elderly relative who stays upstairs in a locked room and "sleeps most of the time; you won't even see her; leave her food outside her door," later recreated in the throwback film The House of the Devil. There's also a menacing undertaker/chauffeur(?) ready with a casket, a lot like The Tall Man in Phantasm, but this guy's way more foreboding (trust me). Side note: My favorite scene in the film is when the hearse-looking automobile you know contains that sunglassed-out creeper is coming up the drive in the distance and it's just a matter of time before you'll have to deal with his not-at-all reassuring smile again. Burnt Offerings isn't the best ever and actually can be a little plodding and redundant at times but there's a pretty good payoff at the end and I'll graze a spoiler just close enough to say that it again resembles The Shining. As you probably already know, the house always wins.

Psycho (1960)

I don't have a whole lot to say on this one because I feel like everybody else's love for this film greatly overshadows my own. Ninety percent of the movie is pretty disposable to me - yes, even the shower scene (blasphemy, I know). I really only included it because of how much the ending shocked me as a kid and how it kind of made me want to become a psychologist (which I am now studying to be). If I'm a sucker for anything, it's emotionally upsetting twists and this movie has the mother of them all. (Psycho puns never get old!)

Non-Traditional Horror

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
I imagine Picnic at Hanging Rock is not typically considered to be a horror film because it doesn't contain any of the traditional trademarks of horror, like cheap jump-inducing scares, gore, or monsters. It is, however, the most frightening film I have seen, by a large margin. A group of Victorian-era Australian girls goes to a nearby picturesque location for a lazy, pastel-toned picnic away from their boarding school. There is sexual tension, socioeconomic prejudice, and headmistress cruelty, but all of these interpersonal aspects are painted in with the most watered-down of watercolors. The real conflicts here are time and nature and discovery. Some of the girls go missing while exploring a landmark of giant labyrinthine formations known as Hanging Rock, an ominous title in its own right. We are distant, demigod viewers. We witness things happening, but we can only guess at their meaning or cause. It's like Edouard Manet's painting The Luncheon on the Grass (forgive my brain for connecting the obvious) - we have visual evidence but we still can't deduce the absolute truth. We can only guess at what has happened and what is happening. In Picnic at Hanging Rock, there are any number of culprits: strange young men, a greedy headmistress, a sadistic teacher, jealous classmates, devil worship, pagan rituals, accidental misadventure, or the cold and uncaring brutality of Nature itself. What makes this movie so unsettling is the impossibility of making solid and completely inclusive sense of what we have seen. We are witness to some incriminating behavior but it doesn't all add up and, frustratingly, it never will. No matter how many times I watch the movie and how much evidence you show me to support your theory of what happened, I will never be fully convinced of any specific explanation. And, of course, it isn't so much what happened that's important. It's the meaning behind it - that we can and will be swept out of existence at any moment to who-really-knows-what fate. And as much as we feel that something sinister and unnatural (or maybe completely natural) happened, and as much as our brains try put together a coherent explanation, it's the pieces that were left out - the unknown - that are so effective in this film. It's a strange feeling to have your mind work on overdrive to make sense of something unfamiliar or unrecognizable (like the dog/bear scene in The Shining) and Picnic at Hanging Rock takes that to an extreme.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Hot damn, this is a fantastic film. Ultra-threatening Robert Mitchum is the prototypical obsessive sociopath, bent on obtaining stolen treasure from a dead man's family. Eerily pronouncing himself a reverend, Mitchum's character marries and kills the man's widow while tormenting her children to find out the location of the hidden money. Night of the Hunter is atmospheric as all heck, taking place mainly (you guessed it!) at night and making use of shadows better than, I'd argue, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The two resourceful and fortune-toting children make their way along the Depression-era Ohio River, a pretty bleak scene on its own. Mitchum is always in middle-distance pursuit, having apparently otherworldly tracking skills and a death-proof drive for the very money the children possess. The tenacity of Mitchum's character alone is frightening, but his actual persona, complete with the iconic love/hate knuckle tattoos, is hellish. You know the fate of the children must be death - he's already killed their mother and there's no way a couple of kids can outsmart or outfight a grown man. But then (spoiler?), salvation comes in the form of a super tough grandmother figure with endless Christian charity, played by Lillian Gish (!), who takes the children in and protects them through the night, shotgun in lap, while Mitchum's figure waits tauntingly in the yard. In one of my favorite scenes, Gish sings a church hymn duet with Mitchum because, you know, she's tough enough to sit down with the Devil and out-intimidate him. Shot-by-shot the scariest movie on this list, it's also the only one where evil is vanquished. Proof, I guess, that horror films can also be heart-warming.

The Innocents (1961)

Take all the threat of the unknown from Picnic at Hanging Rock, add in some good old fashioned ghosts possibly possessing creepy kids, and you have The Innocents! Poor Deborah Kerr is always at the mercy of some powerful sinister force that corrupts those under her authority. In Black Narcissus, it was some ancient, native, sinful, but ultimately unnameable force (again, Picnic at Hanging Rock-style). In The Innocents, it's the corrosive spirits of deceased servants who used to work at the home where she's taken a job as governess to two young children. The male servant was apparently The Worst Ever and was violent and sexual toward his girlfriend, the children's old governess, in front of the children. Now he's a ghost and he might be possessing one of the children, who turns out to be kind of creepy and flirtatious with Deborah Kerr. Or maybe it's all in her head and she's seeing things that aren't there and maybe the kid acts creepy because of what he was exposed to. In some ways, the beginning of the film is like Suspiria or Rosemary's Baby. People are acting a little weird and something might be awry but surely our heroine can't be in danger! While the girls in the other two films discover the unholy truths of their respective residences, Deborah Kerr gets a little creepy herself and starts badgering the kids about ghosts and imposing figures in the distance. The best parts of The Innocents are the scenes where the "ghosts" can be spotted - a black-clad woman across a pond, a shadowed head atop a tower, a face in a dark window. These are the things that propel the film into truly scary territory. Though more effective in the novel the film is based on, The Turn of the Screw, the ambiguities in the characters' relationships are also unsettling. This comes to a head at the climax of the film (oh, Henry James, I hope you'd be proud), and again, there is no distinct resolution, only more uncertainty and unsavory possibilities. As is becoming clear to me as I write about these films, ambiguity is horrifying.

The Road (2009)

The scariest people-eaters are not slow-moving, dense, decaying zombies; they are living human cannibals, equipped with the mental function to stalk, manipulate, and stockpile their victims. The Road is a washed-out nightmare-apocalypse tale of an average dude and his son trying to survive in a world where everyone is basically killing each other all the time. Although there luckily aren't a ton of people around, the dude is still terrified that someone might come across him and his kid and, considering the dwindling number of bullets in his gun, his only form of protection, he decides that he would rather kill his son than allow him to be captured. Because, as it eventually becomes clear, being captured means having your body parts harvested as food. The stark, disarmingly beautiful cinematography makes a sort of depressing poem out of the film (likely staying true to the novel it was based on, which I haven't read), as opposed to a grotesque slasher flick. I think that's why the movie's horror aspect (which is only a small part of film as a whole) appeals to me. Flesh eating isn't ravenous or messy or campy. It's just sad. It's the sad reality that developed when people ran out of other things to eat. Eat strangers or let your family starve. The man and his son, however, have managed to not resort to cannibalism and they are on their way to what is apparently some better place. So there is hope for them. The first (in order of appearance, not level of horror) Most Horrifying Scene happens when the boy and his dad go into a house and discover some basement dwellers (my favorite!), who are both innately terrifying and innately tragic. (SPOILER: This is absolutely the most scarring and the most real-world-plausible human meat market I have seen in a movie. /SPOILER) The second Most Horrifying Scene comes at the end of the film, when ambiguity again rears its ugly head and leaves us wondering about the fate of the boy, who is maybe the last good and innocent person left on the planet and NEEDS TO BE PROTECTED! What we are left to imagine are a couple grisly outcomes, and one almost impossibly optimistic outcome. The Road builds amazing suspense, seemingly out of nothing, and includes some scenes of breath-stopping terror, but it also takes things that are scary - scary because they hunt us, plainly, without any supernatural or occult element - and peels back the layers until they just seem unfortunate. The depressing reality of fate, no matter what hopeful stories we tell ourselves. But that last scene, maybe taking pity on us, leaves open the possibility that our stories were true, that maybe suffering and sacrifice can lead to something good.

So what have I discovered makes a movie scary for me? These things, probably in this order:

Ambiguity

Figures in the distance

Staring / breaking The Fourth Wall

Cannibalism

Perverse familial sadism

Twist endings where someone turned out to be crazier/more awful than you previously thought

Darkness

Basement people