I enrolled in this class because I am a big fan of horror movies. I have watched them since I was a kid and was always drawn to them. I really was just curious to see what would scare me and that lead to a few nightmares and a few sleepless nights as a pre-teen. I never knew why I was drawn to horror films though and that is what Noel Carroll discusses in her article "Why Horror?". I found it very interesting and it really is a great topic. If horror films scare and disgust us, then why do we choose to watch them and sometimes pay money to watch something that freaks us out and repulses us. Carroll says it best when she says, "We do not, for example, attempt to add some pleasure to a boring afternoon by opening the lid of a steamy trash can in order to savor its unwholesome stew of broken bits of meat, moldering fruits and vegetables, and noxious, unrecognizable clumps, riven thoroughly by all manner of crawling things" (Carroll 33). So why do we enjoy scary films? Well that's a great question. Carroll states that we do not watch them to get disgusted but we watch them because horror films are a still telling a narrative. It is not just random jump scares and disturbing images but it is a story and I fully agree with Carroll on that.
Now let's get to the two films we watched for this section. Werner Herzog's 1979 film Nosferatu and Jason Lei Howden's 2015 film Deathgasm. These films in my opinion could not be more different. I watched Deathgasm first and to be honest I did not have high hopes for it after seeing the description and trailer, but it was awesome. I am a big fan of every film Quinten Tarantino film so I am no stranger to violence and gore, but this film took violence to another level. It was not really a horror movie in my opinion though. This film was a comedy with a few aspects of a horror movie. The demons and the violence were scary, sure but this movie was a comedy. It actually kind of reminded me of This is the End, which was also a comedy that had horror aspects.
Nosferatu was completely different than Deathgasm, it was pretty slow but it was definitely a horror movie. It is just a classic horror narrative, the Dracula story. To me this movie was just really creepy. Everything about Dracula in this film is just spooky and unsettling. The way he looked, the way he talked, the way he acted, literally everything about him was creepy. This movie definitely creeped me out. I am glad I watched it because I had always heard about Nosferatu, but I had never actually seen it. It is a historic story and it I would suggest it to my patient friends who I think could sit through the entire movie. Deathgasm and Nosferatu are polar opposites in my opinion but are both great and interesting films.