Spooky

I don't do suspense. In any form, really, if I can help it. I hate watching live ice skating competitions; every double toe-loop stresses me out. When Matlock episodes send their title character uninvited into someone's empty office to snoop around for clues, I have to leave the room. I "watch" suspenseful movie scenes from the kitchen, pleading with Mark to narrate a play-by-play for me. Because I love and respect books, I try not to read the end before I get to the end, but I will often flip ahead and skim to see whether an endangered character's name continues to appear.

And then there's themoviespoiler.com.

I love this website, which catalogs long, thorough synopses of the plots of current movies, and I've become pretty dependent on its services. It has become a real rarity for me to watch a movie--ANY movie--without reading the spoiler first, so I generally walk into the theater (or turn on the tv) knowing exactly what is going to happen and when and to whom.

The movie-spoiler habit offends my husband. I'm not sure why; I never, ever tell him what I've read, so it doesn't affect him in the least. He maintains, however, that I'm ruining the movie somehow by reading the plot ahead of time. I disagree: once I've read the spoiler, I can relax and enjoy whatever else the film has to offer (crisp dialogue, rich characterization, soaring score, cinematic artistry) that I would likely miss if I were squirming in my seat and watching through my fingers, bracing myself for something to jump out at me.

Case in point: Super 8. We went to see this one for Mark's birthday, and I loved it. I have a thing for ensemble comedies, and this suspense movie functioned like that on many levels, but I would have hated every minute of it if I had been all locked up by wondering what the heck is the thing that escaped and where is it hiding and oh my GOSH what's going to happen to that girl?!?!?

Still, I understand that this quirk of mine betrays a pretty serious weakness: the anxiety that I often allow to take over my life. And so when I took "get a passport" off my list (expensive! maybe on the list of 50 things), I added "Watch a suspenseful movie without reading the spoiler first." Because anxiety is not the boss of what I watch.

Last week I browsed through the Netflix instant-watch catalog under "Thrillers" and looked for movies featuring themes that wouldn't give me nightmares for months. I decided a vampire movie might do the trick, since I don't believe in vampires but can't say the same for serial killers, home invasions, and escaped lunatics. The only vampire movie on the Netflix list was From Dusk Till [sic] Dawn, a 1996 movie starring George Clooney. Two nights ago Mark and I settled down to watch it.

Let me say from the outset, so as to avoid misunderstanding on this point, I am not recommending this movie. The language descends into atrocity within the first few minutes of dialogue, and it's pretty extreme in its squishy, campy violence. Quentin Tarentino co-starred in it and was the driving force behind the movie (a fact I hadn't realized), and he's a gifted but strange and maybe sick individual. We waded through about 40 minutes of the grossness of this film, which in that interval offered me many opportunities to be frightened, before we got to the main setting of the vampire part of the movie. It was a strip club. At that point we realized we were going to have to abandon it. (SEE? This is what we get when I don't read the spoiler.)

We flipped through some more titles, looking for something scary but less offensive, and realized that that is a tall order. In the end we landed on Dial M for Murder, hoping that Hitchcock would give us a modicum of suspense and a little more decency.

It worked like a charm for me. Mark was unimpressed and kept asking me, "Are you seriously scared of this? At all?" You have to remember, though, how low my threshold is. I'm afraid of everything, so yeah, Hitchcock did the trick.

The experience was definitely affected by its juxtaposition with the vampire debacle. Dial M for Murder tells a pretty chilling tale of cold-blooded deceit and heartlessness but maintains a really, really high level of propriety. So high, in fact, that its incongruity with the levels of evil it portrays was disarming and creepy. And while I do think Quentin Tarentino is good at what he does, I also think it's more impressive that Hitchcock was able to tell an engaging, suspenseful story that made us want to keep watching without green slime, foul language, or topless vampires. What a difference.

And man, Grace Kelly was GORGEOUS. No wonder she was such a big deal.

So I did it. In the end it didn't feel like all that much of an accomplishment, honestly...it lacked the satisfaction of finishing a 10k or changing a tire. :) But I'm going to claim it as a victory anyway on the theory that there is value, considering all my issues, in simply doing something that scares me. Even a little.