Tag Archives: Horror

Anthropology, Holidays, Movies/TV Shows, Religion & Spirituality, Uncategorized

Friday the 13th and the Ghost in My Backseat

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Paraskevidekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th, and this evening, I had my weird Friday the 13th experience.

I was on my way home from dropping off my daughter at her school dance. As I was turning a corner I saw for a brief flash in my rearview mirror the image of a ghastly woman as if she was sitting in my back seat. She had a sort of bluish illumination with two dark eyes with blackened mascara-like smears running down her face. Nothing too original, but it did cause me a split second’s release of adrenaline. The best part is that I know exactly what I saw and why.

Yeah, kinda like that!

For uncertain reasons in the Western world and especially the United States when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday it is believed to be an unlucky day.

I grew up with this superstition and believed in it to whatever degree young children can believe in anything they have no ability to understand and no reason to believe other than the influence of their peers. The fact that I was a very young child at the beginnings of the extremely successful Friday the 13th movie franchise has shaded my view of the event in a particular light for me.

I’m not unique in this, these days Americans particularly see Friday the 13th as a scary and dark day, a sort of reverse holiday similar to Halloween without the costumes or trick-or-treating. It comes with its own myths and urban legends. Much like the Santa Claus at Christmas of the Easter Bunny in spring, the murderous hockey mask clad and machete wielding zombie Jason Vorheese from the Friday the 13th movies is and for a long time to come will be in the future attached to this spooky unholiday. This really is a testament more to the quality of the marketing of the franchise than the quality of the movies themselves that even as I child I found to be more funny than frightening, but I still love them. Jason lives in mythology alongside classic legendary supernatural evils like the Headless Horseman, Dracula, or Frankenstein.

There’s a fair amount of speculation regarding the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition, but no one really knows for sure. The number 13 has been considered an unlucky number for hundreds of years. This is so prevalent that most hotels do not even host a 13th floor. The numbers on an elevator will often go straight from 12 to 14 because many people are afraid to rent a room on the 13th floor. It might seem crazy, but it’s true.

The superstition of 13 being bad luck seems to have arisen during the middle ages and is assumed to have come from the story of the arrest of Jesus after the Last Supper when He and His twelve apostles were present equaling thirteen.  Similarly, the fact Jesus was crucified on the following day; Friday made that day a particularly infamous part of the week, one which Catholics and Orthodox Christians still consider a day of fasting. These two beliefs combined seem to be the origin of the superstition; two unlucky points occurring at once although the origins of Friday the 13th being especially unlucky didn’t seem to arise until the 19th century.

In the 20th century authors such as Maurice Druon in his novel Le Roi de fer (1955), and John J. Robinson in his book Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry (1989) postulated a connection between this superstition and the day on which the Knights Templar were arrested on charges of heresy by King Philip the IV of France, Friday the 13th of October 1307. This was echoed in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003), and other books, memes and papers since then. Although this is one of my favorite hypotheses, the evidence to support this being the origin of the superstition is dubious at best. It’s more likely a combination of reasons.


In my car, as quickly as the ghastly woman had appeared in my rearview mirror she was gone, but I could still see the impression of her eyes. They were spots of dirt with what appeared to be smeared finger print running down the glass. As I was turning the corner the setting sun passed directly behind me for just a brief moment. The sun’s rays reflected off of the mirror in a manner framing the fingerprints in a glow and accentuating the smudges. Then my lizard brain took over and assembled this into an image I could make sense out of based on the fact I’ve been thinking about Friday the 13th and creepy stuff all day. When my daughter gets home from her dance we plan on watching some scary movies.

Human psychology is such a fascinating subject.


Media, Movies/TV Shows, Religion & Spirituality

Midsommar, a Poor Rewrite of the Wicker Man

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When I first learned about the movie Midsommar, I was excited to see it, but I was skeptical that it would be another modern rewritten and renamed reproduction of the Wicker Man. I’m not talking about the 2006 abomination starring Nicolas Cage. That was awful. I’m talking about that original 1973 British masterpiece starring Edward Woodward, and Christopher Lee.

Unfortunately, it was just a rewritten Wicker Man, and not good one.

The plot is very simple. An exchange student from Sweden decides to take some of his American college buddies home to take part in the Midsummer festival in Hårga, a reclusive Swedish commune. After a long, drawn out and obvious setup, Hårga is revealed to be a murderous, psychedelic-infused pagan cult as the guests start disappearing one by one, culminating in a grand holocaust at the end. In and of itself, as a Wicker Man rip-off that sounds like it has some promise.

Promise broken.

Midsommar failed on every level. The movie just didn’t make any sense and was full of plot holes and consistency errors, but the worst part was the awful pacing that rolled along like cold molasses. Scene after scene was just long, slow and drawn out, I suppose intended to create suspense, but instead created boredom.

If you could keep conscious through the slowest scenes, then you had to struggle through the lack of a compelling narrative. Once the main cast arrives in Hårga they indulge in eating psilocybin mushrooms, as is the custom of the village, and from then forward the cinematography is filled with psychedelic visuals rather than strong and original plot points. Actually that was the best part because other than visually, Midsommar also failed to deliver any psychedelic sensation thematically or philosophically. It was all just superficial like so much else in Midsommar.


The neo-pagan cult of Hårga was also poorly developed. There was no sense of a convincing philosophy at work that could compel a community to collectively engage in mass murder. The villagers followed a scripture consisting literally of crayon scribbles made by a severely deformed product of inbreeding. There was nothing more than a hack-job of mediocre imagery and costuming that came across as if it was cobbled together by someone who spent all of about thirty minutes researching paganism on the internet. It seems like they just ran with the most superficial aesthetics. In the Wicker Man, the paganism seemed sincere, and living. In Midsommar, it just seemed like post-Woodstock communal hippie LARPing.

The scenes that were clearly intended to be the most bizarre and mind-blowing or frightening more often came off as cheesy. The most noteworthy in this way was the breeding scene which almost came across like a bad comedy routine. Judging by the laughter from other audience members, I was not alone thinking this.

From beginning to end, Midsommar is a hack-job. The little that was good about it was done far better in the Wicker Man forty-six years earlier. All that was rewritten into that plot was poorly developed and thrown together, boring, or unintentionally comical. Not making any sense, especially after a post-viewing deconstruction is not the same as being mind-bending, or psychologically thrilling; it’s just poor writing.

My final ruling is that Midsommar is nothing more than a long, slow, half-baked rip-off of the Wicker Man without any of the charm or cultural depth. It’s not scary, not creepy and not a thriller, psychological or otherwise. And it tried way too hard to be all those things.


Media, Movies/TV Shows, Uncategorized

The Walking Dead – More than Just Zombies

Honestly, I don’t care much for zombies or zombie movies. I’ve always found them to be a little juvenile. Most Zombie films always seem like a trite rip-off of Night of the Living Dead. Well, AMC’s series The Walking Dead, although not particularly original in its title is anything but a generic zombie story.  Actually, I think it’s pretty damned good.

In the interest of full disclosure, I only began watching the show halfway through the second season and I never read the comic book series off of which it is based.  I was aware of the show, but as I said I don’t care much for zombies, and I figured it was just a long drawn-out rehashing of that god-awful movie 28 Days Later.  One night however, I was bored and decided to give it viewing.  I was hooked from the very first episode I watched. After that, I made it a mission to backtrack and catch up with all the episodes I had missed.

While I don’t like zombies (can I say that enough?), I have always been a fan of post-apocalyptic themes.  There is just something that fascinates me about a devastated world, sparsely populated with rag-tag bands of survivalists fighting to reestablish some sense of civilization, fighting against roving gangs of marauders, monsters or aliens … whatever, in an increasingly neo-tribal, neo-medieval environment – and THAT is what The Walking Dead does right – so much that the zombies don’t even bother me.

            

The characters in The Walking Dead are very well developed, and the social dynamics of the main band of survivors are intense and believable. There is everything from sexual dynamics, racial tension, and marital problems. It is filled with action, adventure, drama, a bit of romance (but not too much mushy stuff), tragedy and just the right amount of gore without going overboard.  There is not a flat or one-dimensional character in the series, at least not one that sticks around for very long. And that could serve as a warning to new viewers – be careful which characters you get attached to. They might not last very long.

The story basically follows Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), a sheriff’s deputy in Georgia, whom after being shot in the line of duty wakes up in a hospital to a world populated by the cannibalistic living dead. He hooks up with a band of survivors, reuniting with his wife and son, and eventually finds himself thrust into a precarious leadership position. He begins the series as a down-home, mild-mannered, all-American family man. Then after many months of fighting zombies, marauders, back-stabbers, and watching his friends and loved-ones killed and “turned,” he begins to descend into a rather dark place. Even he is disturbed by his transformation.

The Walking Dead is a great series. In the end however, it is not about the zombies.  It’s really about people, humanity, love and cooperation.  It’s about being pushed to the breaking point and keeping it together. After society has completely broken down what’s important is more than just mere survival. It’s about finding a sense of meaning in a world of chaos. It’s about creating normalcy in an environment that is anything but normal. Each episode leaves you eagerly awaiting the next. And me personally, it leaves me pondering: “How would I have handled that?”