Riverdale — “Chapter Thirty-One: A Night to Remember”
Before today I didn’t know much about Stephen King. Sure I’ve heard the name associated with The Shining and IT and from that I just assumed that he wrote horror fiction, as I am not a fan of horror I assume this is why I’ve not delved into him more. I came across Stephen King and became interested for a very unlikely reason. I was watching Riverdale, a teenage mystery drama show that airs an episode on Netflix every week. This particular episode was different from the others leading up to it. The show is filled with murder and scandal, and this particular episode based all that horror and scandal around a musical based on Stephen King’s Carrie. The main characters were each playing a role in the musical and the role that they played had to do with the characteristics they were currently reflecting. I researched the plot of Carrie before making it too far into the episode so that I knew what was going on and so that I wouldn’t miss out on anything that involved assumed knowledge with the story of Carrie White. One thing lead to another and I ended up stalking the absolute hell out of Stephen King, I read about all of his novels, how he grew up and then read about all of the film adaptations. I compared him to a modern day Shakespeare a little bit, people always re-telling his stories that involve so much tragedy.
After filling my brain with all of this knowledge I began to wonder how interesting horror can be. Especially when it comes to someone like me. See, I love not knowing what’s going to happen and I’m an absolute sucker for a little thrill, but I’m also a little sensitive when it comes to gore. It’s like I have a strictly horror related photographic memory. Once I see something horrible it sticks with me forever. It haunts me in my wake and in my sleep. Honestly I wish I was exaggerating or being a sook but I’m serious, I have nightmares all the time where I wake up yelling, sweating, crying, I’ve even hit and kicked people in my sleep before by thrashing about. So as much as I want to witness these absolute genius spectacles of film, I’d prefer to not give my brain the easy option of stealing these horror ideas. I find it amazing how much the tone of a film can be edited to scare people out of their wits.
Maybe I should direct horror films, the ideas for them already come to me from my dreams.