I don’t watch scary movies because they scare me, fill my head with disturbing images, give me nightmares and keep me from sleeping. I’m kind of a scaredy-cat, something to which I readily admit, so I have no trouble avoiding scary movies.
As Christians, though, is that a stance we should take? Should Christians avoid scary movies?
I’ve discussed this a lot with high school students over the years. Students always see the latest and greatest scary movie and then can’t stop talking about it. The boys always talk about how the movie wasn’t that scary while the girls always talk about their nightmares and lack of sleep.
This whole process has started again because of the movie Insidious. I haven’t seen the movie, I’ll never see the movie, but I read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia. Insidious is about a parallel spirit world inhabited by demons that cross over through certain people. One of these demons starts crossing over and wreaking havoc on a young family.
Is this something that Christians should watch?
I believe in demons and a supernatural world, not how they’re often depicted in movies, but I believe they exist. Does watching scary movies about those topics allow our minds to wander and focus on the dark things as opposed to the glorious light of Christ? Or are scary movies simply a relatively cheap way to release dopamine and endorphins into our blood streams?
There are a lot of gray areas in our lives of which the Bible isn’t very clear. For some people, though, I think scary movies might be more definitive than gray. I’ve heard of people asking for prayer because they’ve seen a scary movie and can’t remove the images from their minds. For those people, they’ve invited some amount of darkness into their lives which they think only the power of prayer can remove. That’s not a gray area; that’s something that should definitely be avoided.
For others, though, they can watch a movie like Insidious or The Exorcist and move on as if they had been watching Lilo and Stitch. The images don’t fill their minds and the light of Christ isn’t pushed out by any darkness. In that case, scary movies are a gray area and probably don’t cause them to stumble or fall.
God lays down some pretty clear boundaries but, within those boundaries, there is plenty of gray area. When living in the gray, we need to be honest with ourselves and make choices that will keep us from stumbling or falling. And, more than that, we need to make sure that our choices within the gray won’t make anybody else stumble or fall.
Should Christians watch scary movies? Why or why not?
A whole paper could be written on this topic.
I believe that it is important to differentiate between the truly scary and the merely startling. To me, a movie with numerous unexpected scene cuts to random grossness is completely different than a movie that creates a continuous mood of fear punctuated by climatic moments.
Movies are scary because of gaps in faith. For example, movies about zombies, vampires, and werewolves are not scary to me because I have a strong faith that those things do NOT exist. Movies about spirits and psychos, however, may be scary to me because I believe they do exist. If my faith were strong enough to believe that God would protect me from these things, it would be impossible to scare me with them. It is debatable whether knowing of ways in which I doubt God (so I can pray about them) is worth getting temporarily sucked into what is essentially a lie.
If the movie is based on a real event, it gets even muddier (eg. Emily Rose or the original Amityville – not the remake). Though movie depictions are never completely accurate, it is important to realize that there are scary things in the world that we need protection from.
There is also the individual aspect. Many people were scared by “The Ring”; but I saw it as a zombie movie (see above). In contrast, being science-minded, I still consider “Event Horizon” the scariest movie I have ever seen. Everyone is scared by something different and I don’t always know whether a movie will scare me until I see it. (I am usually disappointed.)
Should I be taking the chance? If not, to what extreme should I go to avoid being scared. I wasn’t looking for a scary movie when I watched “No Country for Old Men”, but I found it fairly scary (it’s a psycho movie).
After saying all this, it should be known that I do not watch scary movies very often. I think of them the same way I think of “downers”. The world is scary and depressing enough without the need to watch movies that are scary or depressing.
Thanks for your thoughts, Pat.
I agree that things can pretty muddy and that each person needs to be honest with themselves about the movies they watch. I loved “No Country For Old Men” but it was more than just scary for the sake of scary; I think it had a lot to say about the human condition. Most movies need to be weighed on their merits and whether or not they can add something to our lives.