Horror Movies, My Mom, And Me
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I became a full-time carer. Officially, of course, I can; I was 17 years old, just out of school and unsure of what was next. But unofficially… I’m not sure.
I can remember moments, times in my life jumbled and out of order, when it may have started. Maybe it was when my grandparents told me I was the man of the house now that my father wasn’t around, when he was nothing but a detached voice on the phone. Or maybe it was after that when I was eleven years old and helped my mother into the hospital entrance while she was pregnant with my little brother. Maybe it was years later, as I held my mother and brother while we watched the police take my father away.
Or maybe it was none of these moments. Maybe it was when I told my mother that I loved horror like I knew she did. And maybe at that moment, perhaps, she finally found a confidant. An ally in this strange life she had found herself in.
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I can trace so many moments of my childhood to horror movies. I remember coming home one evening, turning on the television, and seeing kids hanging from a railhead trestle bridge, the mist underneath them, one by one letting go, and thinking “I’ve got to see this film!” The next day I immediately went out and bought The Lost Boys.
I remember picking up a VHS copy of Robocop off my aunt’s shelf and thinking I had my hands on something forbidden. Then I remember watching it and thinking I had never seen anything like this in my life.
Then there were weekends spent at my grandparents’ house, the rain running down the conservatory windows, watching The Goonies and Terminator 2. I remember wanting to go on an adventure, to search for buried treasure. I remember going into the bathroom and crying after the T-800 descends into the molten vat and raises his thumb goodbye.
Then I remember visiting the video rental store after my pregnant mother had to stay overnight at the hospital. I went straight to the horror section and picked out Thinner, Pet Sematary, and Cujo.
My childhood was spent watching films and reading Stephen King for hours on end. It was about escape. It was about setting myself free from the mundanity and cruelty of the real world.
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A lot of the time being a carer is about what you’d expect. It’s preparing things like food and cups of tea, food. It’s going out and getting the groceries, paying the bills. Or It’s taking someone to the dentist, to the doctor. Other times it’s accompanying them to a strange room in a strange town, and waiting while they justify their illness and, therefore themselves, to a room full of skeptical strangers in charge of their benefits. These are the moments when my mother feels like she most loses her sense of dignity. But other times it’s just about providing company, about being there; about presence.
But sometimes things can be worse. A lot worse. My mother suffers from severe PTSD, depression, and anxiety. At times she’ll suffer from flashbacks and be launched back to a past she doesn’t want to think about. A sound can do it, a phrase. Loud noises can send her reeling, gasping for air. There are times when the sheer act of taking things in becomes hard. The whole idea of reality, her perception of it, becomes so fragmented that nothing sinks in. Once it was so bad it led to her being taken away from us for a while. I can still remember her crying, telling me how sorry she was, the pills still laid out on the living room table.
There are no breaks. You cannot clock out at five and start work again at nine. When it’s bad I’ll check on her, just to make sure she’s okay. In truth, a lot of the day is spent that way. Checking in, just to make sure.
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But, like me, the movies help her. Every night she will look on Shudder, Netflix, and Amazon, to find a film to watch. Mostly horror and thrillers. It’s a kind of therapy that allows her to escape for a little while. It is almost always a horror film. It’s a way out, a moment to breathe.
Sometimes we’ll watch films together. I still remember us both watching Lake Mungo and coming away from the film stunned. To this day, I think it’s still the most frightening film I’ve ever seen. Not just frightening in an obvious way, but in how emotionally wringing it is, how much a family wants to cling on to the memory of a loved one. It made me think of my mother, as well as my little brother.
At some point, I became a father figure to my brother. It was something natural, something that just happened in the absence of my father. I would take my brother to school, to the dentist, to the doctors. I would watch his school plays, his music performances, and be there for the awards ceremonies.
When he had to take a year off school due to health problems when he was eight years old, I was sad that mental health problems hadn’t skipped over him. But in some ways, I was also thankful that we got to spend more time together. We grew closer, if that was possible, bonding over music, comics, and movies. When he spent time in hospital with sepsis, I was there. The staff found me a cot and I stayed by his side for three days. We talked about music, books, and films until he got the all-clear to leave.
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Movies have always been there for us. My mother has passed on her love of Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Carrie, The Thing and The Entity to me. I’ve passed on my love of After Hours, The Game, The Long Goodbye, Dead Man’s Curve, and Big Trouble in Little China to my brother.
There are of course differences of opinion. My brother is less enamored with The Fifth Element and 90s slashers than I am, while my mother is less keen on Eraserhead and horror comedies like Slither. My brother loves Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Return of the Living Dead like me, while my mother has no desire to watch either of them.
One thing we all do agree on, however: Scream and Scream 2 are classics.
In time my brother and I have also developed our own routine with regard to movies. Every week we get a pizza. A man named Emil comes to the door with our usual order. “Two pizzas, two sides,” he says quietly and hands them to us. It’s a tradition, something that we started in 2015. The first movie we watched was Stay Tuned. My mother will come down a little later, maybe take a slice or two, and then go up to bed.
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It’s become a tradition, something we look forward to most weeks, and we’ve watched some great films in this way. Films like Miracle Mile, Society, 3:15, Class of 1984, The New Kids, Night of the Creeps, and Fright Night, just to name a few.
My brother has even got me into movies that have evaded me. All through my life the Friday the 13th films passed me by. I couldn’t tell you why. But it was my brother who insisted that I watch them. He told me that The Final Chapter is the best one with the best final girl. According to him, Jason Lives has the best iteration of Tommy Jarvis in Thom Mathews. So last year I bought the complete Friday the 13th boxset from Scream Factory and we watched every one of them together. Our love of horror came full circle.
That’s not to say that I have gone through all this unscathed.
There are times when it all can become overwhelming. and the sacrifices of being a full-time carer can feel a little too much. Every day consists of constantly putting yourself second. So when you are finally allowed back to yourself, you’re unsure of where you are. Fear and worry can accumulate; sometimes it seems like danger is there lurking in every second, every minute. You experience moments when you’re terrified of everything.
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In these moments it’s important to have someone or something to turn to. I’ve had to frequently seek help for my mental health, for the times when the pressure is overwhelming, and the world seems to be growing tighter and tighter. It’s important for carers to look after themselves. They need to call on friends and other family members, to look online for carers groups that understand what carers have to go through. Carers need to keep tabs on their own mental health, because it’s easy to get lost in the maelstrom of the day-to-day. I’ve experienced first-hand how quickly things can turn if left unchecked.
Thankfully, though, horror movies have always managed to provide an escape for us. It’s a slight release of pressure, a momentary escape from the real world. They’ve been enough to sustain us, to take us all away from the pressures that the real world can exhibit. For when it seems like the real world is the toughest horror of all.
(As an aside, my brother was right. The Final Friday is the best one, while Thom Mathews is absolutely the best Tommy Jarvis. I’ll have to differ with him on the final girl, however; Trish Jarvis is kickass, but I think my favorite just has to be Chris Higgins.)
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