It all started with Prom Night. It was 2008, I was thirteen, and I’d been invited to go see this new horror movie with a group of girls I didn’t know very well, but whom I had become pretty friendly with since starting middle school just a few months prior. I didn’t yet have many friends at the time, and this would not only be one of my first hangouts with new people, but it would be the first horror movie I’d ever watched in my entire life.
I remember that before I got to the theater that night, I did hold onto an initial apprehension – an uneasiness built from years of fearing the front covers of scary DVDs while perusing Hollywood Video with my dad – but which dissipated as soon as we entered our screening. This was because the theater was packed, to a point that I don’t think I’ve seen recreated since – or maybe it has been, but that feeling certainly never was.
It was an introduction to the communal shrieks, gasps, laughter and then sighs of relief that come with a full house horror screening, and which were punctuated by my own feelings of unity with my friends, with the other theater-goers, and the experience itself. It’s a memory that I’ve held onto all these years later, still so sharp in my mind that I can see exactly where we sat in the theater, and the angle from which we watched teenage blood drip from the screen.
Though 2009, an entire decade ago (and a horrifying reminder that it’s been ten whole years since I was fourteen), found most of its influential flourish in now-horror classics such as Zombieland, Antichrist, Drag Me to Hell and even The Human Centipede, I remember the year a little differently.
The horror renaissance of my 2009 kicked off with the Friday the 13th remake and lasted throughout the year, finishing off with the alien found footage film The Fourth Kind and leading to a lifelong genre devotion. When I think of 2009, I think of the goofy dybbuk horror The Unborn, the possession horror The Haunting in Connecticut, the evil child thriller Orphan, and the mixed bag American remake of the Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters, The Uninvited – films that seem to have fallen off the face of horror discourse forever. But they each left a lasting and unshakable impression on me.
A year or so after my Prom Night experience, I had heard through the public school grapevine that the theater in our hometown that sold conveniently cheaper tickets compared to the local AMC also sold them to unaccompanied minors looking to watch an R-rated film. So, my friends and I made our plans to see the new reboot of the classic slasher Friday the 13th, while I went and lined up our showing with an age-appropriate film playing around the same time. A deviously seamless technique I would employ for any and all R-rated films until I turned eighteen, I would tell my parents that the latter film was the one I was attending. They still don’t know that I did that.
Thus, if the unsuccessful 2008 remake of the horror classic Prom Night was the catalyst to desire, then that Friday the 13th revival was the ensuing chemical reaction. With no easy access to, nor slightest interest in the violent artistry of Lars von Trier, the trash horror to grace suburban cinemas was my teenage entryway into the entire genre. And while a PG-13 rating is frequently looked down on in the horror community, in comparison to the bloody opportunities available when rated R, there is still something to be said for its impact. If you aren’t so lucky as to be gifted with a theater that doesn’t think twice about letting a group of fourteen-year-olds into a remake of The Last House on the Left, PG-13 horror films can be an accessible opportunity for kids with a curiosity about the genre.
I’d be lying if I told you I could recollect what any of these movies I’ve mentioned are about. I am constantly misremembering The Unborn as having starred Megan Fox (that was Jennifer’s Body, also a 2009 film), and though Orphan was a film that seemed to light up giddy conversations in the halls of my high school due to an uncomfortable scene coinciding with the film’s big reveal, you’d be hard pressed to get any synopsis out of me. The Fourth Kind’s only mark in my memory is not of the purportedly “real” footage of alien existence, but of the closing credits, during which supposed real-life narration is used in place of music. It includes a line that my friends and I swore said “My daughter is seven and she saw a square!” – which underscored inside jokes between us for months. But I digress.
When I look back at the horror films of 2009, I somehow can’t remember when I went to see Zombieland. But I can remember when I saw The Uninvited and guffawed at its uninteresting plot twist while third-wheeling with my friend and her boyfriend. I remember going to the theater, and going consistently – constantly intrigued by the promise of a new horror film and not once being discouraged by the disappointing end product. I always wanted to watch another one of these films, and I always wanted to come back. Though the content didn’t leave much of a mark, it was the experience of being in the theater, being with my friends, and being exposed to the genre itself. I knew I wanted more, and I wanted better. I wanted something to scare me.
The horror of 2009 was, for me, an understated teenage goldmine – seemingly forgotten in the eyes of tastemakers, but influential to those of us just entering puberty and bored on a Friday night. My friends and I would always find ourselves intrigued by the potential of an adrenaline rush from something spooky called The Haunting in Connecticut, complete with a convenient 7:00 PM showing so that we didn’t have to miss dinner with our parents. But the things that teenagers enjoy often end up overlooked, in favor of what’s considered “true quality.”
And to an extent, that’s not entirely false. Back then, my friends and I would go see almost anything just to spend time with one another. There was no counter on caliber; we didn’t give a shit about Paul Thomas Anderson. We’d get to the theater a little early or stay a little late, just to hang out in the back by the stairs leading up to the projection room, taking goofy pictures of ourselves striking weird poses with our Canon cameras, during a time when iPhones were only just being conceptualized. But more often than not, we’d eventually find ourselves sitting in the very last row in the screening of a B-rate horror film.
When I look back on it now, I feel thankful that we did.
