By: Darien Campo Staff Writer
October is slowly coming to a close, but the horror movies keep playing in my house.
This week I watched “Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993), “Sweeny Todd” (2007), “Tusk” (2014), “The Frighteners” (1996), “Goosebumps” (2015), “Cabin in the Woods” (2012), and “Friday the 13th” (1980).
2015 saw the revival of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series with a new film starring Jack Black.
While the movie was a bit lacking in places, it was a fun nostalgia trip back into the classic series that used to occupy me for hours. I used to collect all the Goosebumps books as a kid — I loved the creepy, gross, scary, and shocking tales R.L. Stine had provided for me. I was a horror fanatic in a child’s body, and authors like Stine fed my fascination.
I used to read all the ghost story collections I could find back then.
Authors like Bruce Coville gave me plenty of chills, but there was one trilogy of books that really stuck with me all of these years. Alvin Schwartz’s “Scary Stories to Read in the Dark” trilogy gave me legendarily bad nightmares. The grotesque illustrations of Stephen Gammell were twisted beyond all belief and made those books transcendently terrifying.
I’m not alone either, adults still celebrate Schwartz and Gammell’s work, and in fact, a new documentary about their trilogy is currently in the works. Those books may have frightened us, but even as children we knew that it was fun to be frightened.
I don’t feel that enough attention is put into horror entertainment geared toward children.
We tend to assume that it’s an adult-only genre, but there’s a world of opportunity for juvenile horror. We’ve seen some great examples before with movies like “ParaNorman” (2012), and “Coraline” (2009).
These movies know how to scare children and keep them laughing. But the undisputed master of children’s horror would, of course, be Tim Burton. No one else quite has that perfect blend of wondrous, childlike fun mixed with a sick fascination with the morbid and macabre.
Movies like “ParaNorman” are usually met with opposition from parents wanting to protect their children, and the “Scary Stories” trilogy is a regularly challenged book year after year.
It can be hard to imagine horror as an acceptable genre for children. But it’s important to remember that it is a ton of fun to be scared, no matter how old you are.
