Scary can be fun—as long as it doesn’t give you the chills for the wrong reasons.
Everyone responds to trauma differently, and, if you’ve said “Me Too” this month in response to the Harvey Weinstein incidents and have been feeling triggered because of it, you’re not alone. With Mother! out in theaters right now (tip: just say no) and Halloween decorations infiltrating our worlds, now is the time to put this out there on behalf of all survivors.
A movie is never just a movie when you see something reminiscent of a real life terror. Case in point, after I directly survived 9/11 as a child, I could barely sit through Spiderman (2002). Seems harmless enough, right? But as I sat with my friends at the movie theater across the street from what was then still Ground Zero, I didn’t start to have a panic attack because of the location. I still lived and went to school in Lower Manhattan. It was because of how closely the explosion scenes and crumbling buildings resembled what I’d run from the year before.
Any genre can potentially deliver trauma triggers, but if you turn to horror to escape by kicking up a “safe” adrenaline response, you need to know that the below movies will not have the safe effect as watching Chucky prance around the room. There’s plenty streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime this month and all year long to satisfy your need for a scare—one that allows you to stay contained in the world of the film. These are not those films.
Yep, both versions. The only female character has a dad whose relationship with his daughter, based on a number of not-so-subtle implications, ranges from creepy to incredibly disturbing, depending on what you project into the space based on your own life experience. Fortunately, I had nothing to project, but I do have a wide knowledge base of the kinds of trauma children and women live through, and I didn’t like the involuntary fill-in-the-blanks the director set me up for. Queue long bathroom break. Twice.
The sloppy way that assault and domestic abuse are dealt with in this film is not only appalling and insensitive, but it gets worse during the final 15 minutes, when the mish-mosh of nonsense leaves you feeling frustrated anyway. If domestic violence against both women and children is an issue for you (Oh, everyone? that’s a relief), skip it.
I have never in my life shut off a horror movie without watching the end, no matter how painfully boring or horrific it was, until I watched this. The first “video” in this hackneyed series of short films contained within a single movie features a girl passed out drunk, possibly drugged, on the bed in a cheap motel room, several awful guys, and prosthetics in situations you’ve likely never seen, on film or in person. Keep it that way.
A Cure for Wellness
First of all, this vanity project is about fifty minutes longer than it has the right to be. At one point, my husband looked up from his Twitter scroll to ask, “Has nobody said anything in the past twenty minutes?” No, they did not. The climax is not only deranged and far-fetched, but it checks off the boxes of incest and statutory rape. Avoid.
The Grudge franchise
If you’re sensitive to any sort of violence against women and children, again, I’d go ahead and avoid this one. It gets graphic, and whether it’s in flashbacks or real time, it’s not all in good fun. It’s brutal.
The Entity
Though made in 1982, this is perhaps the most obvious example of them all, since it’s literally about a "ghost" raping and violently attacking a mother who has a history of men leaving her and a father who held her “the way a father shouldn’t hold a daughter.” it's riddled with some pretty literal metaphors and very visual scenes that are unbearable if you’ve been in any sort of similar situation (even worse, it’s actually based on actual documented events). It’s sure to burn you up if you have ever been victim-shamed, accused of exaggerating, being ‘crazy’ or dramatic in any way , or had your experiences invalidated, especially by men in positions of power.
At one point, which is scariest of all, we find ourselves blaming our protagonist, as we do with all characters in a horror movie, for the poor choices she makes that she has to make in order for this embellished plot to progress. In this case, it’s especially jarring, as we quickly realize we’re being made to blame the victim. This is all kinds of wrong. No thank you. I don’t care if Martin Scorsese said this was one of the scariest movie’s he’s ever seen. Keyword there is “he.”
I’ve also been told, though I don’t wish to expose myself to the risk, that these are also equal offenders: A Clockwork Orange, Last House on the Left, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I Spit On Your Grave, and The Hills Have Eyes.
If, on principle, you want to avoid any horror movies made by filmmakers accused of sex crimes, skip the Jeepers Creepers Franchise and Rosemary’s Baby.
My Completely Safe Alternatives:
- Insidious (1, 2 and 3)
- The Conjuring (1 & 2)
- Ouija franchise (Mike Flanagan directed the prequel, which is pretty safe, but avoid his other works, Hush and Oculus, also his brainchildren).
- Annabelle: Creation (Ok, at this point I have to disclose I am not working for James Wan or any of his affiliates. He just doesn’t go there. Good for him.)
- Heidi
- Hell House LLC
If you feel triggered by anything you see this week, next month, next year...please talk to someone you trust or consider consulting a therapist who specializes in trauma, like a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, Dialectical Behavioral Therapist. You don’t have to suffer through real life, and it’s easy to lose the remote that changes the channel in your own head. Sometimes, self-care is about being extra diligent about what we expose ourselves to. You don’t need to force yourself to sit through something that feels disturbing to prove to yourself that you can handle it. You’re a woman. You’re tough. You can. You have nothing to prove to anyone.
Helaina Hovitz is an editor, writer, and author of the memoir After 9/11. She has written for The New York Times, Salon, Newsweek, Glamour, Teen Vogue, SELF, Forbes, Upworthy, Reader’s Digest, SELF, Women's Health, Bustle, Upworthy, VICE, HEALTH, and many others. Read more at her website, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
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