The child has grown, the dream is gone. I have become Comfortably Numb.

Considering that Halloween is around the corner, and being influenced by a video supplement for a game review for “Saw: The Video Game” and assorted reviews for Paranormal Activity, something really struck me to the point where I should seriously talk about it.

The genre of “Horror.”

I personally don’t enjoy the feeling of getting your heart rate suddenly jumped and set to go faster than the RPM of your average submachine gun. I especially dislike those “shocker” sites. Anyone who knows me that actually pulled those stunts on me can reminiscent on the fists they received at high velocity.

I scare easily. I admit it. But it’s not an actual “fear” of being scared, it’s the fact that getting scared actually pisses me off.

I get pissed when I’m scared.

I don’t like getting pissed.

Ergo: I don’t like getting scared.

The only real “Horror” movie that I really could tolerate was the original Halloween. Why is that? you may ask. The answer is pretty simple:

It created the Slasher formula, and did it right. Most slasher films these days are just contests to make the most elaborate deaths or the most gory gore, or make the most realistic-looking gross-fest.

That’s not scary. That’s just shit on a set. Sure it’s carefully-designed shit, but as my Hypermedia teacher always said: “You can’t polish a turd.”

And really, you can’t.

Paranormal Activity, from what I’ve heard, does something different than most “Horror” films these days. It at-first gives you absolutely no information about what exactly the “scary Force-A-Nature” is really supposed to be.

That is real horror. It brings back that whole jist about “Being scared of THE DARK.”

You’re not exactly scared of the darkness itself. You fear for what may be lurking in the darkness. THAT there is real horror. Not random sequences of some dude in a mask shoving sharp knives through the abdomens of large-breasted women who act unrealistically seductively.

The thing about the original Halloween is that it had a reason to show the large-breasted, sex-craving “bitches” of the movie get slaughtered while the mild-mannered “good girl” narrowly survives the onslaught. It was supposed to give a kind of “fear for being bad.”

It’s like the kid story on the “Boogy-man” (which, funny enough, is actually referenced in Halloween itself) where Parents tell the kids that “They should be good little boys/girls… OR THE BOOGY-MAN WILL GET YOU!”

Seriously. Parents don’t even need to explain what the Boogy-Man will do. Just say “Get” and kids will use their imaginations.

Kids are retards, for the most part. I admit to being one. They’re certainly not stupid, but they definitely aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. (See what I did there?)

Anyway, they hear “Get” and they start thinking about what the parents actually meant by “get.” Then comes the fear of “not knowing.”

Even I was a victim to that, and I STILL don’t know what exactly the Boogy-man would’ve done if he existed. Would he have strangled me? Would he punch my face in or shove a knife up my ass? Would he grab me, cover my mouth to prevent my screaming, and then feed me to German shepards?

What?

… What?

That’s my point. We don’t fear the motherfucker itself. We fear just what he can do, and what he will do.

But when you start making more and more films based on the exact same thing, except with different ways of killing people, it starts to turn the message into a parody, a mockery. Something that shouldn’t really be taken seriously.

The message to “be a good boy or girl” disappears, and then it all turns into a shitty splatter-flick that somehow encourages you to “root for the killer.”

If that’s what a Horror maker accomplished, he/she shouldn’t ever write, direct, or even affiliate him/herself with any future horror films. Because I’ve never heard of such failure.

In the first Halloween, Michael Meyers was practically THE silent embodiment of pure fucking evil. He was big. He had a mask. He murdered his sex-craving, big-boobed sister while wearing a rubber mask, along with her boyfriend. He had no qualms about it. He said nothing about it. He had no reaction. He was sent to an asylum. He broke out of said asylum. He starts knife-fucking big-boobed, sex-craving women like his sister, eventually going after the only potential victim left…

AND HE FAILS TO KILL THE ONLY GOOD GIRL OF THE MOVIE.

He also never kills innocent kids whom have potential to still turn good. Although his presence alone scares the shit out of kids anyway.

But the thing that made him scarier was that he took six revolver shots everywhere, fell off a balcony, and landed wrong. The Doctor looks to the surviving girl, and then back.

HOLY SHIT! HE’S NOT THERE!

The camera then takes well-timed long shots around the neighborhood, ultimately showing nothing.

To me, that was the scariest part in the movie: right at the end.

Seriously, Michael Meyers was not only a silent embodiment of evil who wears the scariest-as-hell mask in history, and not only is he a big man who knows how to kill, and does it for absolutely no discernible reason, but he survived gunshots to resume his slaughter of big-boobed, sex-cravers. Sure it made room for sequels, but once you start getting to FOUR movies, you’re starting to push it.

And now we have SAW, which is coming out with a SIXTH installment.

What the hell, guys? It seemed like yesterday since FOUR just came out. Where the hell did the next two come out? When will this crap end?

I mean, sure. Jigsaw is bad-ass as heck. While I never watched the films, I heard the Original Jigsaw’s voicework. Seriously, that guy’s kick-ass.

And considering that the Original Jigsaw is kick-ass, it already kind of failed once you got to SAW 2. After all, you don’t want to root for the Killer. That’s almost as bad as being a big-boobed, sex-craving freak- Hell, maybe worse.

My point is: Horror as a genre has gone straight to hell, and no amount of redeemable films can bring it to a good light again. Horror was once good, but there’s now so much crap that no amount of filters can redeem the genre as a whole.

Horror is overrated.

Of course, this is coming from someone who’s never liked horror in general, save for the original Halloween.

I rather liked Michael Meyers for his silent, “just plain evil” attitude. He doesn’t give a shit about who you are, or who your father or mother is, or whoever you know, or what weapons you have, or your physical prowess- even if it’s superior to his own. He just wants to kill you. He has no reason behind it. He just wants to fucking kill you.

It reminds me of the Joker, except The Joker seemingly had goals. Michael Meyers had no plans for the future. He just wanted to kill you, and continue killing you.

The Joker, however, will never be as big a threat as Michael Meyers. For one, Joker shows his face, and he talks, and monologues, and he’s not physically “great” compared to… say, Rorschach, let alone Batman.

Michael Meyers doesn’t speak. He hides his face behind the scariest mask in history. He doesn’t scheme for the future. HE JUST WANTS TO KILL YOU! HE KNOWS NOTHING BUT TO KILL, AND DO IT WELL. AND HE CERTAINLY DOESN’T HAVE ANY VISIONS OF HIS MOTHER ON A WHITE HORSE TELLING HIM WHAT TO DO.

Give him a knife and tell him to kill someone, he’ll go and do it… And then kill you afterwards… and then kill your friends… and everyone you know… and then everyone THEY know.

There’s nothing more to him. He’s a simple character, and sometimes simplicity is the best weapon. To top it off, simplicity should remain simple.

I got this amount of information on Michael Meyers’ character off of seeing only one movie… and a review of Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2- but who’s counting?

Point is, I like Michael Meyers more than I like Freddy, or Jason, or Alien, or Predator, or whatever the hell kind of dudes work in the same general fashion.

Freddy’s got the hand-claws and the horribly scarred face. Jason has the machete and hockey mask. Alien has the acid blood and the iconic faces. Predator has invisibility and weapons that shred shit up.

Michael Meyers has a creepy-as-hell mask, and his own bare hands… and sometimes a simple knife.

They say the most bad-ass one is the one who doesn’t need weapons or attributes. That says a lot about Michael Meyers.