Read the Spoilers First to Watch a Horror Movie Without Feeling Terrible
By all accounts, everyone hates spoilers , and if you mess up a movie or TV show on the Internet, you’re a bad person. I tend to agree. A small thing is not to neglect revealing a big story on social media or elsewhere (a movie blogger I followed for 20 years decided to spoil a new James Bond movie in the title before it even came out; more precisely, he is now a movie blogger. which I once followed). To thoughtlessly ruin something is, as they say, a real asshole. But there is one instance where I advocate for a spoiler almost every time is when I watch a horror movie. It’s not that I don’t like horror; just watching it makes me feel bad (a condition that was only exacerbated by the pandemic, during which my recreational diet consisted mostly of convenient foods ). But if I read the spoilers first, it’s easier for me, and I can really focus on the plot, rhythm, cinematography and music – you know, the “cinematic” parts of the film – instead of gaping. an abyss of anxiety opens up in me. This is consistent with the results of a much-cited study that found that people tend to report that they like storytelling better if they experience it already knowing what’s going to happen . The results were confirmed for participants who were asked to read one of three types of stories – riddle, ironic story in the style of O. Henry, and “literary fiction with a neat denouement”; As researcher Nicholas Kristenfeld of the University of California, San Diego put it: “The point is, we are not really watching these things while waiting for the finale. I draw the attention of skeptics: people watch these films with pleasure more than once, and often with increasing pleasure. ” I understand that suspense and fear are kind of a horror problem, perhaps more than most genres, and of course I see value in a killer twist (no pun intended), but some films are more vile than others. Meeting the big discovery at The Sixth Sense on the first weekend is a great movie memory; trying to stave off the stress spasm as the Hereditary built its wild crescendo, less so. But on subsequent screenings of both films, I found the first no less enjoyable, and the second much more enjoyable. In each case, knowing what was about to happen made it easier to understand what the films were doing, in addition to being punched in the stomach all the time. Heredity is especially highlighted in a spoiled or second viewing: knowing what awaits me in reserve, I was able to fully understand what the film was really about (grief, dysfunctional families, general trauma), since I was not consumed by bad feelings.
In fact, it was during my first, unpleasant viewing of follow-up director Ari Midsommar – asters to Hereditary – that I realized that I could essentially turn my first, stressful viewing into that second, a more relaxed viewing by instantly pausing the film and reading a short story on Wikipedia. I did so, and once I knew how things turned out, I was able to accept the rest without wanting to waste all the time. Maybe the director did not think so, but I did it much better . Not everyone agrees with this plan. Lifehacker editor-in-chief Jordan Calhoun, for his part, objects to my strategy; He argues that if you watch movies with friends, the experience of unspoiled people will somehow be tainted by their proximity to the spoiled – the former will be able to tell when something terrible will or won’t happen by their body language and reactions. (This argument seems dubious to me, perhaps because I mostly only watch films with my wife, who usually looks at her phone.) But this can only be a problem if you only watch films that no one in your group is. saw and you know each other well enough to pick up such subtle signals. (If so, well, good for you Mister or Miss or Mx. I have so many friends.) This is not a tool to be pulled out of the box every time. I find this most useful for films that are more viscerally dependent on lingering tension (see Aster’s body for work, or the surprisingly effective increase based on the demonic obsession of Flick the host). I probably won’t resort to this for, say, Scream 5 , because this franchise is too self-conscious to be truly intimidating. But if I did, that would be good – of course, I’ve seen the other four Scream films quite often, and without diminishing returns from the second or third viewing. You see, it’s all about my level of pleasure and, in the end, if someone asks me,“Do you like scary movies?” I want to be able to say a resolutely yes.