I saw the movie The Ring in the theaters around 2PM one Saturday afternoon. Walking out to the car in broad daylight, Maribou and I laughed at the various holes in the plot and drove home and we thought little more of it… until it became bedtime. (Maribou and I were on two different schedules… hers was about 2-3 hours later than mine.) I was lying in bed taking the blankets and staring at the ceiling and at the closet door that was perpetually open in our little apartment and thinking about “the tape”. “HONEY!!!! Come to bed!”
Anyway, that movie screwed me up for the rest of my life (I’d say it was about a one-fifth Watership Down) and so I really can’t see horror movies anymore. This means that I never saw the movie Saw. I’ve read about it, I can appreciate that there is much artistry and deftness of touch to this particular film and one or two of its googolplexian sequels (certainly compared to Hellraiser and the various splat films of the 80’s) but The Ring broke me. I ain’t never going to see it.
I have found, however, that I can still play horror video games. Perhaps this is because horror, in video games, is so very difficult to get right… (perhaps that’s an essay for later) but, when done well, horror leaves you with a lot of little images for you to contemplate when the lights are out and you can only barely see the open closet door. Since so very few do it well, you’re not stuck remembering the centipede or the ladder falling or the rocking horse how in the heck can a rocking horse be scary?
I digress.
We come to Saw: The Video Game. This game captures the one thing that a horror video game really needs to instill in the player: Urgency. If you can get the player to say “oh no, I’ve got to do this…”, you will get the player to engage. You play Detective Tapp (I understand that he was played by Danny Glover in the films) and you have to go through a story that takes place between Saw II and Saw III (not that you need to know this in order to play or enjoy the game). Jigsaw killed your partner, Jigsaw ruined your life, and now you’re stuck in an asylum and you have to take Jigsaw’s tests and play his games to make it out alive. The upsides include the puzzles being fun and interesting and the atmosphere being exceptionally oppressive (with more than its fair share of “jump a foot in the air” scares). The downsides include the combat… but who cares about combat in a spooky horror game?
If you are a fan of the movies, this game will fill in some holes for you, I understand. If you’re just a fan of horror video games, this one will scratch your itch. If you are a fan of puzzle games and wish that there were more puzzle games done in a palate of “hobo bus station restroom”, then this game is *DEFINITELY* for you. Keep it away from the kids, though. It’s nightmare fodder. (If you play it yourself after the sun goes down and find yourself staring at the ceiling, just ask the significant other to come to bed. Nicely, of course.)
So that’s my recommendation for you this week.
I have never been a fan of horror. I saw Poltergiest when I was eight years old and it messed me up into my teens with reoccuring nightmares. I have started watching them, a little, now, but they hold little interest. The Ring was one of the scarier ones I can think of that I have seen in my adult life. It is impressive that they could make a video of some really silly stuff and make it creepy thoughout the movie.
I have never played a horror video game.
I’ll probably talk about horror video games that worked (and why) in the thursday essay.
Poltergeist was truly horrible for a 9-10 year old mind to see. The tree tries to eat the boy, the innocuous clown tries to kill him, the bodies coming out of the pool, the hallway getting longer, the semen-y looking dinosaur ghost at the bedroom door, it was all too much for this little guy.
I’ve still never seen it.
John Carpenter’s version of “The Thing”. Saw it I think in 1982, when it came out on videocassette? Possibly 1983? I would have been between 10 and 12.
That messed me up. I was sharing a bedroom with my little brother at the time and every day for three weeks I checked the laundry hamper to see if his underwear was all ripped up.
Alien was another one. Right about in 1988, I decided I wasn’t going to be scared of movies any more, and that worked for all the slasher flicks I ever saw on DVD or VHS up until The Ring, which did freak me out a bit on the drive home (story there) although it didn’t cause any nightmares. That’s the last movie that affected me outside of the theater.
I’m not interested in torture porn. Scary movies that involve monsters or aliens or undead don’t bother me, they’re unreal; gore doesn’t bother me in those although gratuitous gore knocks me out of a suspension of disbelief while watching the movie and makes it unfun. Torture movies that involve psychopaths have a thread of realism to ’em that bothers me, too close to possible for me to be comfortable with them.
I can read about them, but I don’t want to watch it. It’s a little too… I don’t know… voyeuristic?
Oh yeah. The thought of movies like Hostel just make me want to throw up. Saw, I understand, is a bit more cerebral than that and, as such, make me even more likely to not want to watch it.
But it makes for a fascinating video game.
While I do not ‘get’ the point of watching horror movies in general, I have and even harder time understanding why people would want to watch the torture porn versions. What is so interesting about this?
People are very bad at self-awareness. They have a tendency to subsume a lot of crap that they’d rather not process in order to concentrate on getting through the line at Starbucks and making it to work and picking up the dry cleaning and walking the dog. Psychic release comes through watching another’s pain. Hell, this is what reality TV is all about.
The more repressed your crap is, the more you need to give yourself an outlet for it. The more distanced that actual outlet is from your reality, the easier it is for you to disclaim the fact that you’re actually processing your crap, because that would require you to actually examine what it is you’re trying to unload.
It’s not a great method, but most people use it to some degree or another as at least one of their coping mechanisms. This is where we get torture porn, it’s the logical next step. It’s not too far from snuff films, really; if you’re watching movies like this routinely you really ought to go see a therapist and figure out what garbage you have locked down in the cesspools of your soul.
Of course, therapy is expensive, and it’s work.
This post above is pretty much what I feel when someone says that they NEED to start up GTA3 and immediately steal a car and run over people “to release all the tension they built up over the day”.
I’m thinking…”okay, it the only way you can deal with your tension is to imagine yourself violently murdering dozens and dozens of people then maybe you need to talk to some kind of therapist, because you’ve got issues.”
I use table tennis as a release of stress, not this stuff.
Do you want to play something?
Sure.
Saw: The Video Game?
It’s on top of the TV.
I don’t think I’d enjoy it because I didn’t see Saw.
The first thing I thought was inspired by The Last Psychiatrist’s post about “Star Wars PTSD” (or something.)
As that writer pointed out, many studies have shown that people who feel like they’re in control of the situation experience significantly less stress, despite circumstances and events which cause severe stress responses in others. Pilots of aircraft show much lower levels of stress hormones and other indicators than crewmembers or passengers, even though everyone’s in the same situation.
So maybe the reason that you don’t feel as scared when playing video games is that you’re in charge.
That’s a brilliant point, sir.