Shock! Horror!

A curious development of becoming a parent to two increasingly personality-filled kids is my disinterest in horror movies.

This from a person who grew up worshiping at the church of Freddy Kruger. In truth, I was petrified of horror movies until I was about 14, when I fell off the deep end and even subscribed to Fangoria Magazine for a long while.

But now, they have no appeal at all. And I put it down to my having kids. It used to be, when I saw a stupid teenager get hacked up by Freddy or Jason Vorhees, it was funny because: "Huh, look at that stupid teenager." Also, many of the movies I grew up with featured a great deal of boobs and general female nakedness. Perhaps the real appeal, between all the blood, was getting to see John Cusack's girlfriend from Better Off Dead in just her underpants (and then, less appealingly, gruesomely murdered by an invisible Freddy Kruger - in fact, she was Freddy's first victim in the six-movie series.) Now that idea is too close to home, and too... real for want of a better term.

I didn't see Saw. I have no intention of watching The Ring. I just watched 28 Weeks Later and was left feeling disturbed - not thrilled or excited or scared. Just unpleasant. And that's not a fault of the film in the slightest. A 15-year-old me would have loved it. I just found it depressing.