by Kristen Washington | 3.14.2013
I’m often told that I am the best person to watch scary movies with. Not because I enjoy them or revel in the horror as it unfolds on screen, but because I am incessantly terrified of almost everything. The slightest movement makes me jump or scream and leaves my friends in a fit of stifled laughs while I try get my heart rate back to a normal speed.
The list of horror films that are forever engraved in my mind is a mile long, leaving terrified thoughts that plague my existence. I could pick DARKNESS FALLS, which instilled an irrational fear of the Tooth Fairy (for crying out loud!) at the young age of … 14. I could also write about THIRTEEN GHOSTS, which left me terrified of bathtubs for the better part of 6 months. However, there is one scary movie that has had a lasting terrifying grip on my daily thoughts and nightmares — THE GRUDGE.
THE GRUDGE is about a cursed spirit that kills everyone it comes into contact with. The spirit stems from a woman named Kayako who was brutally murdered by her husband, him being convinced that she was having an affair. The movie opens with an American couple and their elderly mother who move into the house where the spirit lives. The couple is killed by the spirit, leaving the mother to be taken care of by a caretaker. In comes Sarah Michelle Gellar and ensues the never-ending terror that is THE GRUDGE.
Not only did I sleep with my light on for three days after that movie, I didn’t want to sleep in my bed. I was afraid to open cabinets, and I couldn’t even go in my garage where my attic was, all in fear of being sucked into the depths of darkness by Kayako. Yes, I know, this is all very dramatic.
Thankfully all of these (completely rational, if you ask me) fears ended after more than enough anticlimactic, heart racing moments in the imagined eerie stillness of my parent’s house.
But THE GRUDGE has left one last mark on me, this one last terror that’s been branded into my fears: that noise. I don’t even know what it is! It’s this gurgling croak that come straight from the pits of hell. My hands are sweating writing this… so.
…Anybody seeing THE CROODS?
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