[Pride 2021] Real Horror

TW/CW: Suicidal thoughts

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Hi, my name is J.M. Brannyk and I review horror movies.

Working for HauntedMTL.com and Nightmarish Conjurings, I have the honor to talk to directors, I am sent screeners for new movies, and I’m also given the space to share my thoughts and opinions for people to, kindly, ignore.

It’s a glamorous lifestyle.

One thing that I’ve noticed, from watching movie after movie, is that the heart of horror is loss. This is the crux and the core of the genre. It comes in every flavor and heartbreak—loss of control, of our bodies, of our confidence, of our trust in each other, of our normalcy and hopeful expectations. It’s the loss of solid ground and our place within this world. It’s a deep and long narrative of our own personal and human histories that moves beyond the gouged latex skin or the CGI blood sprays. It is the root of our primal fears.

As a reviewer, horror is much easier to explore when it’s someone else’s. In fact, I’m just awful at explaining my own. Writing my own experiences usually feels cheap and omittable. It feels as fake as the birds in Birdemic: Shock and Terror, and almost as annoying. 

But it scares the shit out of me.

As I’m writing this, I am in my own spiral of monstrous loss and it scares the absolute shit out of me. Because things are going to change. Big time.

Akira-blob-monster big time. 

Three days ago my spouse woke me up after an hour’s sleep and told me that she wanted to kill herself. We called the hotlines, we gathered her things, and I drove her to the local emergency room. I dropped her off and was quickly told, kindly but sternly, to get the hell out. It was during a pandemic and I had overstayed my welcome.

So, after that, I drove home and found the little crime scenes throughout our newly appointed dream house. I put away the bleach. I turned off the lights. I untangled the noose and put the rope back away. I walked around the house, haunted by these little telltale objects of desperation and loss. I couldn’t sleep. I stumbled through the empty rooms and waited for a phone call that I knew would eventually come: a phone call telling me that she was alright and ready to talk. 

And if this were a movie, this would be the part where the flashback happens, as I limply sit on the couch and stare out the window as the sun slowly peers through the curtains. The flashback is from two years prior, in October, when she told me that, after fourteen years of marriage, she is a trans-woman. 

Honestly, I don’t remember what I said. I’d like to think it was vaguely supportive, like, “I’ll always love you,” or “thank you for telling me,” but all I remember is that we were in a McDonald’s minutes before I was supposed to start setting up for Halloween with my dad. All I remember is how the fries mixed into paste in my mouth and that familiar cold wriggle in my stomach of panic dropping deeper, like swallowing a jar of refrigerated worms. 

I do remember how she assured me that nothing would change. She was just the same and would be just the same. Everything would go on, status quo and all that. And I do remember my heart punching at my breastbone because I knew, so deep down, that her words were lies. Lies for me and for herself, so that we could keep going. 

But the puzzle box had been opened and you can’t just shove the Cenobites back in because they’re inconvenient. They come when you call them. They are a truth, just as this was her truth.

And truth, as freeing and affirming as it is, is terrifying. You can’t go back to where you were before it. Just like in It, you now see It, and you can’t unsee its influences. The bloody balloon in the sink popped and the blood was everywhere, and even if other people couldn’t see it, I could. I could, and I had to keep moving like I couldn’t.

The flashback ends. Here I am, two years later, getting ready for Pride, knowing that my life is going to change big time. Suddenly my queer film essay for Gayly Dreadful has shifted from a fun little coding exploration to a confessional essay of my own fears and approaching loss.

I feel like I am losing parts of my identity. I feel like I am losing parts of my wife’s identity. I am losing my ability to hide. I am losing the solid ground and a safety I’ve been privileged enough to mask myself within. A part of my life, a part of my own hidden truth, is about to be exposed. Being bisexual and genderfluid is all fun and games online for dumb horror essays, but now my real life is on the precipice of the unknown. 

I am changing now and I can’t stop this, whether I want to or not... 

But as we approach the third act, just as the final girl is preparing for the confrontation, as the monster becomes its most potent, as the music stings rattle against the background, everything shifts again. I am the audience. I am the horror reviewer. 

I realize that this is about her horror and my own anxieties are expounded as I watch her struggle in the darkness, looking for self and salvation in her journey. In these scenes, I am just the observer, writing my opinions and thoughts that people will, kindly, ignore as she is the one to continue her story. She is the final girl. I can only, with trepidation and concern, wait for her to make her move against this monster. I can only place these haunted props away in her absence.

I can only wait for a phone call that I know will come eventually…