Horror films and horror stories don't generally freak me out or scare me, unfortunately, but I still watch them in the hopes that they will.
That's not to say I haven't been scared by things before.
As a child I was afraid of the Hulk. Don't ask me why, since I have no idea, I just know I was so scared of him that my dad bought my older sister one of those blown up dolls with a weight on the bottom that are designed to be punched and they fall down and bounce back up, for her protection from me, since I would terrorise her on most days, and the only safety for her was to hide behind this hulk doll that would scare me too much to go near her.
I was also afraid of the film Jaws, and would go to sleep having nightmares that the bath would overfill, and a great white shark would come bursting out of it and come and eat my sister first (bottom bunk) and then me (top bunk) and I would have to watch her die first without being able to save her, which was the more terrifying part, watching a loved one die and being powerless to stop it.
The next film to scare me, was in my early teens, and it was the original Nightmare on Elm street. Doesn't scare me now, but back then, i was afraid to go to sleep, because again, in my sleep I was powerless to fight and protect myself. For awhile i was also too scared to sit on a toilet properly and would hover over them just incase freddy's hand would reach out.
Since then however, no movie has really scared me. Not until I watched....and this one is a bit of a surprise, Apocalypto.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngWBddVNVZsThe thing that scared me about it, was that this is humanity. This is what humans are like in the service to some belief, whether it be a belief in the divine, or not, this is the crowd mentality, the one that relishes in ripping a person a part by their hands if they can, if they believe their cause is righteous enough.
It is not the supernatural that scares me since I do not believe it exists, it is the natural, humans, and even if this was meant to be a portrayal of a savage time long gone, it's a fantasy to believe humans are still not savage now, still not capable now. We know they are capable, it happens all over the world. We are just behind a veneer of civility that is nothing, no protection against the crowd surging and calling out for blood.
I found this movie depressing as a reminder of what humankind is capable of. Sacrifices in the name of a god, it's not as old or as gone as the movie portrays.
The Stoning of Soraya is another movie that depressed me for days afterwards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWQ9phw1C9wAgain, just another look at what humans do to other humans. I couldn't shake the sadness that the last face she saw as she died was the face of the bastard who had done this to her. Nor that her sons threw the stones at her too. To die that way, to see the boys you fed, raised, and cared for, turn against you in the name of religion, in the name of the herd, I just couldn't shake that imagery from my mind.
It is generally the movies that depict humanity in all of it's savagery that affect me the most.
Topic: What is the most disturbing thing you're ever read/watched? (Fictional)