The Killer in Me

Frankenstein. Dracula. The Invisible Man. The Strange Tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Interview with the Vampire. Scream. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Silence of the Lambs. Friday the 13th. You could elaborate on the theme for quite some time – movies, books, plays, short stories, TV series…. Anne Rice. Mary Shelley. Bram Stoker. Robert Louis Stevenson. Boris Karloff. Vincent Price. The horror genre may be reasonably new, but it’s quite influential: name one person who has no concept of who Frankenstein is.

Horror stories are, as a whole, looked down upon by Christians. Some of this is justifiable – the books and movies tend to be filled with sex and gore more than anything else – but should we ignore the genre completely? Or rather, is there something to be gained from taking a closer look? Perhaps our fear of sin keeps us back: the effeminate piety in vogue for the past 150 years shudders at such stark displays of depravity. But perhaps it needs to be seen.

Let’s shove aside the slasher films like Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer, the type that go simply for thrills, that see horror and gore as the whole point. There are others who simply use these elements as vehicles to show us more important ideas – giving us lessons about depravity and the way we deal with our own drives, from sex to knowledge to vengeance.

Horror films have a unique aspect of first distancing ourselves from the characters (or at least the monsters). We see the atrocities they commit, and we recoil in horror. But then we’re hit from an unexpected angle: the humanity of the monsters, and how close they come to our own sins.

Frankenstein is a good example of this: our sympathies are drawn towards the being created by the scientific promiscuity of Victor Frankenstein. Despite the fact that he looks horrible, despite the fact that he commits violent murders, we see our own thoughts reflected in his emotionally honest moments. And suddenly his deeds aren’t so far removed.

We like to candy-coat ourselves and our fellow humans – man isn’t spiritually dead, he’s just sick. We like to hear about atrocities and think that we’d never be able to do that. We like to envision ourselves without the fall, like a Thomas Kinkade painting.

But this is simply naïve. “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.” (Matthew 5:21-22) Or to get back to the very basics: “All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) Far short. Our nature isn’t as rosy as we’d like to think it is, and there are times when we need to be woken up.

Of course, this can be taken too far and become a macabre self-loathing, equally unworthy of Christians. Realizing our sinful nature is not an end in and of itself. The point is – as with everything – God’s glory and love. Only when we see ourselves for what we are do we truly appreciate what God has done for us. Only then do we see that salvation is not of our doing, but completely of His. We have horrors ingrained in us since the Fall; but God draws us closer anyway, out of his great mercy, ever transforming us into something more beautiful.

So let us go then to Transylvania. See on our left the vampire, age-old and pale-faced, his addiction to blood reflecting the way we prey on our fellow humans. See on our right the werewolf, with his dual nature of good and evil – a conflict of the will worthy of Romans 7. See scattered about, in front and behind and everywhere, the succubus, the ghost, the hobgoblin, each of them amplifying some aspect of our sinful nature. And each of them showing us how helpless we are to move beyond that nature.

See them, and fear God’s judgment. See them, and glory in the mercy of God, who saves you from such horrors in yourself.