Rant off the Beaten Path

-Contributed by Luke Merrill

So this is kinda a new feature I’m inserting into Horror Camp, and I feel it’s fairly important. It’s always well and good for me to embrace the horror genre, but lately I’ve come to second guess myself. I find hiking in the woods to be a little therapeutic, and sometime I find myself hiking at the camp and find out that I’m not at Horror Camp. I’m in a more terrifying place called reality, and at times it seems like they are two sides to the same coin. So hence this feature. I can’t keep reviewing movies and profess my love for the genre without being a little objective at times.

The reason I’m being a little more serious than usual because a lot of terrifying things are happening in the world. Over the summer, there were a few instances with a fictional internet personality known as Slenderman. For those of you who may not know slenderman, from my understanding is a Bloody Mary type internet character/mascot for a website that promotes horror fan fiction. At times you invoke the spirit of slenderman and he may appear or possess you! And it all makes for great fiction except for a few cases where young girls try to sacrifice one their friends to appease the spirit of Slenderman.

One of many slendeman portrayals

This actually happened.

Or a Young girl attacks her mother with a knife, and claims she has no recollection of the event. That Slenderman possessed her.

This actually happened.

Late night news reports (that is to say late late night) were actually questioning the possibility of paranormal activity in these events.

That also actually happened.

So these events began to trouble me, my younger brother loves YouTube and started telling me about some of these game sites where kids play on a Slenderman map. One player spawns as slenderman and chases the other players, and I find I’m having a frank and earnest discussion with my little brother about disturbed boys and girls who actually believe there is a real slenderman. And these boys and girls have lost the ability to differentiate reality from fantasy and may try to hurt you.

It was the strangest thing I’ve ever had to tell a kid.

I never really grew up with R-rated horror it came to me at a later point my life, the teenage years. Once I conquered the fear I embraced it. It’s fun to let yourself get scared and know that in reality you don’t have to be.

But that was the summer and I figured I don’t necessarily have to worry about my little corner of the internet influencing children, but it made me think about how I was approaching my premise. Horror Camp, a nice little fictional place for kids, probably the grown–up kind, to be scared. Then this actually happened.

Steven Miles

Some Young kid with Dexter Delusions, Steven Miles does a number on his girlfriend. It is one of the most horrible things I have ever heard, but I could almost feel it happening a year ago when I was writing reviews for No One Lives and Maniac. Both Psycho thrillers one that glorified the Psychopathic Anti-Hero, and one that more represented how impossible it is to live in a society with these obvious sociopathic tendencies and the destructive pain it brings to both the perpetrator and the victims.

This all comes as a blow. I’m about to release a review on Terror Train tomorrow where one of the more powerful lines in the movie is when the killer stares into the eyes of a potential victim and states, “I am. He didn’t know how to cut a woman into pieces.”  On the flip side of the coin I‘ve got to read about some kid who did do that to his girlfriend.

So I hate to get somber, but even though I have a love for these sorts of movies and stories, I still hope for the understanding that comes with healing the misspent emotions of youth. The young kids who are feeling more and more detached from society that feel lashing out violently is the only outlet left for them.  All you can do is hope that they can find the guidance they need before they throw away their own chances at a normal life while harming the people around them. It makes me sad.

I really don’t have anything more I can say on it.