About Darkness

For Love of the Genre

Have you ever read a speculative piece on horror culture and entertainment? An examination of why we love the sick shit that we love; our issues, or secret, deep down disturbances –and so on, that churn out a need to see gore and slime and feel terrified?

I have found a few, and honestly, they’e pretty cliche; just as much as the idea that violence begets violence in film and music. You’ve heard it before, but I’m going to reiterate an overstated fact: the expression of violent urges and desires in the form of art, is essential in checking the urge to commit violent crime. Horror entertainment and culture is more about expressing and sharing our defective brains with one another, rather than being guilty about having them in the first place.

Horror is the expression of beautiful death; the chase, the fear, –remind us of being alive. But fear is in short supply as ew become more and more desensitized by sex, violence, and explicit evil in the world. When is the last time you were genuinely afraid of a movie you saw, –the last time you kept the lights on?

Fear of the dark, of what’s in it, –of something you can’t see, something that has a reason you don’t understand, or no reason at all. That which creeps into your window, –or the face just out of focus in the glare of your lamp… just outside that sliding glass door?

Fear is your brain telling your body that you’re alive; the desire to get up and get moving, to hide, –not just close your eyes, but really run.

We don’t just want to show you the murder, the slash and hack and brain matter of gore, –we want to scare you, we want you afraid, but don’t worry. We want to feel fear with you. The truth is, the dark is full of unreasonable fears; our unreasonable fears. And in the Darkness, you watch, and we watch, and we will all see what we will see.

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