Scare me!

Whenever I want to forget my problems, I go to the cinema and watch a film. When I go to see a comedy, I expect to laugh. When I go to see a romantic drama, I expect to cry. And when I go to see a horror film, I expect to feel scared. But when I went to see the horror film Halloween II last night, I just felt sick.

The first Halloween film is one of the greatest horror films of all time. It’s a 1978 film about a killer called Michael Myers who tries to kill a teenager called Laurie Strode on Halloween night. Michael doesn’t kill Laurie but he does kill three of her friends and is still alive at the end of the film.

The secret of a great horror film like Halloween is that it doesn’t show you much horror. It just shows you enough so that you imagine the rest. Even when you can’t see Michael on the screen, you can feel him waiting and watching all the time. Your imagination has a lot more power to scare you than any filmmaker does.

Halloween was so successful that filmmakers have made nine more Halloween films since then, including a new remake of Halloween II, directed by Rob Zombie. The problem is that this new Halloween film is like most horror films today. It is full of violence and gore and is a lot more disgusting than it is scary. I hid behind my hands for most of the film and left before the end.

Halloween is on 31 October. I’m sure there will be a lot more horror films coming to cinemas in the next few weeks. I just hope at least one of them can do what a horror movie is supposed to do – and make me feel scared, not sick.