By Emma Keates, Tim Lowery, Jacob Oller, Danette Chavez, William Hughes, Matt Schimkowitz, Saloni Gajjar. From L to R: Final Destination 2 (Photo: Everett Collection), Psycho (Photo: Bettman via Getty Images), The Shining (Photo: YouTube)
To mark the end of our week-long spooky season coverage—in which we unpacked the impact of Stephen King’s work, as well as discussed R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis and talked horror films with Oz Perkins—we thought we’d look back on the lingering effects of certain scary flicks on our minds. So TV critic Saloni Gajjar asked the rest of the A.V. Club staff: What’s your most irrational fear inspired by a horror movie?
Our answers range from Kubrick’s take on The Shining to a fictional shark attack and gory, unconventional slashers. Now we invite you to contribute your own responses in the comments—and send in some prompts of your own! If you have a pop culture question you’d like us and fellow readers to answer, please email it to [email protected].
I didn’t watch a full Final Destination movie until my 20s, but I still managed to develop a debilitating fear of logging trucks from binging grainy death compilations on YouTube when I was a pre-teen, long before I had the guts to press play on the full thing. I couldn’t drive, mind you, but I still managed to work myself into a cold sweat whenever my parents would pull up behind one of those infernal vehicles—something that happened quite a bit growing up in New England. I was just starting to get over it when a dude on Supernatural got impaled by a metal rod that had fallen off his own van in pretty much the same way the cop died by a flying, loose tree trunk in the infamous Final Destination scene. Let’s just say I’m glad I now live in a city where most of my travel happens underground. [Emma Keates]
I wasn’t near the ocean until I was entering high school, so as a landlocked kid, my family’s summer vacations in Michigan (either near Lake Michigan, which back then felt very oceanlike, or one of the small Sister Lakes, which very much didn’t), consisted of two things: Watching Jaws (and What About Bob?, which I’m just realizing as I type this also heavily features madness, an inescapable presence that’s driving that madness, and Richard Dreyfuss) and a lot of swimming. I was not a dumb child. (I think.) I knew that a Great White making its way to the shores of South Haven was an absolute impossibility. And yet, swimming into depths over my head? Or, worse still, getting in the water at night, when it’s dark and everything? Considering what happened to Chrissie Watkins? Are you nuts? [Tim Lowery]
Getting stabbed in the shower, Psycho
The shadowy corners of rooms and the darkness under the bed are prime unseen real estate for demon-filled horror movies. Therefore, totally normal to be scared as a kid. But a brightly lit bathroom? If it weren’t for seeing Alfred Hitchcock’s game-changing horror film when I was way too young, there wouldn’t be anything for me to even conceive of worrying about. And yet, for years after I saw it on TV, Psycho ruined showers and their opaque curtains for me—I vividly recall washing my hair as quickly as possible as an elementary schooler so that my eyes were only closed for the briefest of moments, lest I be stabbed to death by my local dead-mother obsessive. I’m not sure why I thought this was a common thing that was worth worrying about, or why I thought it would happen to me in my house rather than in a seedy motel, but that’s the power of Hitchcock. Besides, people die all the time in the tub! It just turns out that it’s way more likely to be from slipping and falling than being hacked up by a weirdo taxidermist. [Jacob Oller]
Elevators, The Shining/Final Destination 2
As a lifelong horror movie fan, I’m surprised I don’t have more irrational phobias (the climax of 2004’s Bollywood neo-noir, Ek Hasina Thi, did give me a permanent fear of rats). However, I walked away extremely nervous about elevators after The Shining, scared by what could await behind closed doors. Illogical as it may be, the question “What if I drowned in a rapidly approaching pool of blood?” was scary enough. To add to that, Nora’s (Lynda Boyd) beheading in Final Destination 2 and a creepy escape scene in The Silence Of The Lambs compounded my claustrophobia. I’m obviously over it now—although an Evil season two episode almost succeeded at bringing back the phase when I would much rather climb up and down to avoid the possibility of getting trapped, stuck, and possibly killed in a tiny, inescapable space. [Saloni Gajjar]
Toilet snakes, Snakes On A Plane
Look: You know there’s not a snake in my toilet right now. I know there’s not a snake in my toilet now. I’m 41 years old, and my lifetime tally of toilet snakes is resting comfortably at zero. Does this mean that my brain does not—having apparently internalized the lessons of 2006 meme “thriller” Snakes On A Plane in a way I would have preferred it to have focused on some great, or at least less-toilet-based, works of literature—occasionally raise the question “Hey, what if there’s a snake in there?” To which I say: I’m not on trial here, the toilet snakes are. We are, after all, talking about some of the most fang-vulnerable portions of my anatomy, being placed in prime toilet snake range; it only takes one moment of failed vigilance for disaster to strike. [William Hughes]
Being buried alive, The Serpent And The Rainbow
Like everyone else in this post, I can probably chalk this up to having watched something much too young—but that’s an occupational hazard when you grow up with older brothers and a video store with a “three for $5” special on horror movies every Thursday. In any case, seeing at least two adults buried alive in Wes Craven’s The Serpent And The Rainbow (there could be more, I haven’t rewatched it) convinced me that it was an all-too-common occurrence. The history of premature burials would seem to prove me right, though, which is why I came up with a contingency plan to save me from their fate (look up “safety coffin”). I don’t worry about this quite as much now, but I still don’t like being underground, even if it’s just while riding the train. [Danette Chavez]
Demonic possession, The Exorcist
The Exorcist should not have worked on me. I am neither spiritual nor religious, and I was also raised Jewish. But that never stopped anyone from being terrified of Catholicism. Seeing The Exorcist at a sleepover has that effect. So began my lifelong fear of being possessed by the devil, something I’m reasonably sure isn’t going to happen—but still hesitate to get too cocky about. In hindsight, Regan’s (Linda Blair) possession terrified me because it spoke to something that continues to scare me: Losing control of my body. Director William Friedkin took the irrational fear of possession, and he made it frighteningly real, burrowing a worry that I wasn’t in control of my actions deep into the anxiety centers of my brain. Decades of recurring nightmares in which I’m wrongfully accused of a crime later, the fear persists. [Matt Schimkowitz]
