The Scariest Things

I've tried to explain to other people exactly what it is about weird movies and stories that scare me. It may be my overactive imagination, or how my brain tries to piece together unrelated bits and pieces of movie scenes, and works overtime to attempt to make sense of them.

This is what makes weird movies such as Mulholland Dr. particularly frightening. It's not what is readily visible that is scary but that which you don't understand and is beyond your conception. Fortunately, there are many other people who scare the same way as this IMDB thread explains.

It's gotten bad enough that I stopped watching weird movies complete this year. To avoid overstimulating the imagination.

Excerpts: (By the way, the last few paragraphs in the excerpts describes exactly what's so terrifying about the Dumpster Scene in Mulholland Dr.)

I agree that there is something "off" about her relationship with her grandparents. I believe they had high hopes for her as an actress. Which is evident from them being at the jitterbug contest when she won, smiling by her side. Also (in Diane's dream) they are there at the airport wishing her well.

I've always thought that too. I've heard the molestation theory, but I'm not sure I buy that. There's just no evidence of that in the movie that I've seen.

But definitely, I've always thought the way they wish her good luck in her movie career (and then evilly laugh afterwards) had to have some kind of significance.

Perhaps they were the ones that pushed her towards becoming an actress? Gave her the hope that she wouldn't have had otherwise, which ended up ruining her life in her eyes? Also, perhaps the laughing after she leaves them at the airport is an indication that she didn't really believe they thought she could make it as an actress, but still pushed her towards that goal.

And yes, the Rabbits segments are particularly disturbing. On the surface, I believe they represent Lynch's grotesque re-interpretation of the standard all-American sitcom, something along the lines of the "molestation" sitcom sequence between Juliette Lewis and Rodney Dangerfield in Natural Born Killers. And yet the Rabbits also seem to serve an important plot function within the film's universe -- they leave their room, are disturbed by a phone call from one of the film's characters, etc. And the segments are not merely a sitcom parody -- there is a kind of abstraction intrinsic in the Rabbits' dialogue that is, somehow, purely and rawly Lynchian. Intriguing, leading, tantalizing, always dropping hints that it is progressing to the answer to a mystery, but ultimately only folding back upon itself.

I don't think I've ever been more terrifed by anything in a film, or TV show than the Winkie's monster in Mulholland Dr.

That scene ressurrected a kind of irriational, visceral, and primal terror that I had long forgotten, and haven't felt since I was a child. It's the kind of fear that strikes you like an icy dagger, or an electric jolt in a nightmare. In fact, I could just go on, and on, about how utterly brilliant, how utterly genius that single scene is. It's a masterstroke of psychological terror, as if David Lynch is a mad scientist experimenting in a laboratory of human emotions (there's a lot of that exact kind of stuff in Eraserhead, too). The scene works like a scientific experimentation film designed to study the cause, and effects of fear in the human mind. It also works EXACTLY, EXACTLY ... like the way a nightmare goes. As if a nightmare is going on before your wide-awake eyes! You know what? It looks like I am going on, and on. Better stop. Sorry. I should save this for the actual movie's board.

But, I've never seen anything in Lynch's movies, horror movies, or ANYTHING that has ever aroused more of a fright in me. Nothing beats the Winkie's bum, or that scene in general.

The guys are talking in the restaurant. The fearful man sets up the scene with an utterly chilling description of his dream. The other guy convinces him to walk out to put his fears at rest, but you know — positively know — what's going to happen, and the anticipation terrifies you. Angelo Badalamenti's music builds, stoking the terror almost primally.

The nervous guy doesn't want to move forward any further … and neither do we. He doesn't want to move forward because he knows in his heart that the monster is there, too, yet he's impelled onward anyway (just like in a nightmare). Then when the horror fully manifests itself, when the man-thing steps out from behind the wall, you're right there with the doomed man: shuddering and petrified. Everything you feared is true.