Scary Movies

Our family loves Halloween. It's comes pretty close to Christmas as our favorite holiday. Our Halloween festivities are in full swing. Our yard is adorned with tombstones, cobwebs and skeletons. Our trips to the corn maze and ghost walk are planned. The costumes have been purchased. Thiller is playing in the background as dinner is being cooked. We are loving it!

Friday night is typically our movie night. In October we pick Halloween themed, sci-fi or scary movies that we can watch as a family. This year I thought it was time to graduate to some different movies. I mean, I love Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin, but I am thinking we can expand our horizons a little bit.

My husband and I were laying in bed, contemplating movies that the kids could watch and enjoy that won't scar them for life. So we were going through the list and talking about movies we watched as kids. I said, "I watched Freddy Kruger when I was 8. We watched it the night my little sister was born. My other siblings were 6." My husband gave me a puzzled look. I explained, "Our kids would cry and poop their pants if we let them watch it. I'm just saying." My husband stated that he watched Jason as an elementary school aged child. "That was a stellar parenting decision on your mom and dads part." So then we went back and forth, "What about Rose Red? It was a TV movie." "I watched that movie in my 20's and I was horrified." "What about The Shining? It's just a crazy guy and he freezes at the end." "What about the part where the dad murders his little twin daughters?" "Forgot about that. What about IT - I mean c'mon, it's about a mutant spider." "Honey, did you forget about the part with the guy in the bathtub with slit wrists, the demon clown that pulls little children into the sewer and kills them, and the copious amount of blood that is displayed throughout the entire film?" He laughed, "Oh yeah." When my husband watches a movie he only focuses on one part of the movie that sticks out to him and forgets the rest. I worry when I am away. Last time I was out of town for work he let the kids watch JAWS. God help us!

We settled on Signs. It's sci-fi and has some funny parts and is suspenseful and not gory. The kids were freaked out. They were both under the covers shouting, "Tell us when the alien goes away." I turned to my husband and said, "Thank God we didn't settle on IT."