a word from the monster who is coming to get you
My brothers and I, watching old horror movies, used to scorn those scenes where a girl was frantically running from a lumbering beast of some sort. The camera would show a mummy clumping along, then cut to the girl racing and racing, then the clumping mummy, then the racing girl, and then they'd show it from the front, with the girl in the foreground and the mummy right behind her. How on earth do these mummies catch up so quickly if they're going so slowly?
We chalked it up to shoddy moviemaking. But that was then. Now, of course, it's obvious: if something fast chases you and catches you, it may as well be a really fast murderer, or a cheetah, or a gunman in a car. That's the stuff of normal experience, especially for those of us who weren't all that great at team sports in elementary school. How much scarier, though, is a supernatural being who, despite being lumbering and slow, nevertheless can still catch you no matter how fast you run. That's the stuff of nightmares.
I wonder how much that common trope owes to the experience, albeit joyful, of running away from one's parent as a small child. You're running as fast as you can possibly go, and it can't escape a child's notice that the parent isn't even really trying very hard, but still can come catch you. It's a blast when you're the kid: it's actually pretty hard when you're the parent, trying to walk-run the line between thrill and believability.
We chalked it up to shoddy moviemaking. But that was then. Now, of course, it's obvious: if something fast chases you and catches you, it may as well be a really fast murderer, or a cheetah, or a gunman in a car. That's the stuff of normal experience, especially for those of us who weren't all that great at team sports in elementary school. How much scarier, though, is a supernatural being who, despite being lumbering and slow, nevertheless can still catch you no matter how fast you run. That's the stuff of nightmares.
I wonder how much that common trope owes to the experience, albeit joyful, of running away from one's parent as a small child. You're running as fast as you can possibly go, and it can't escape a child's notice that the parent isn't even really trying very hard, but still can come catch you. It's a blast when you're the kid: it's actually pretty hard when you're the parent, trying to walk-run the line between thrill and believability.
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