Here are eight essential hallways from horror films. Hallways are places for tense encounters, confusion, and fear. Hallways are tight, narrow, walled, made for transit - and yet sometimes our most sensitive moments are out in the hall, doors closed behind us. When I built up enough nerve to actually finish all of the horror movies I rented or borrowed, it became obvious that hallway scenes are an essential element of American and international horror films. I did what any kid with an overactive imagination would: I sprinted down the hallway, shut my door, and dove into bed. My parents had gone to sleep after trying to convince me that I should do the same. My sister was home from college, but was on the phone in her room. I realized what scared me the most: that long walk down the silent hallway back to my bedroom. When the movie ended and I turned off the television, I froze. I covered my eyes during The Beyond, a particularly gruesome Italian film set in Louisiana. The van was a suburban cinephile’s dream, but it didn’t have every horror movie I wanted.Īfter I exhausted the late-night timer recordings on my VCR, I began borrowing obscure titles from older friends. Whippany, my hometown, was graced with a Movie Van that delivered VHS tapes to doorsteps.
The New Jersey of my youth was a land of bottleneck traffic, creatively corrupt politicians, and suburbs lined with video rental stores. My bedroom and the living room were on opposite ends of the hall. I grew up in a ranch house defined by its long central hallway. Li-Young Lee’s lines “The photographs whispered to each other / from their frames in the hallway” capture the sense of this place. Hallways were not meant for standing, but we adorn them with images. Jean-Paul Sartre thought modern existence contained a “labyrinth of hallways, doors, and stairways that lead nowhere.” We believe - structurally, metaphorically - that all hallways end.
Hallways are simultaneously prosaic and oneiric. “The hallway is my sleep,” writes poet Rafael Campo.
0 kommentar(er)
