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Bosch's Garden of Delights

Five, should Christians make horror movies? Yes. And in so doing, they join a goodly company of Christian artists from Hieronymus Bosch (The Garden of Delights) to George MacDonald (Lilith) who have sanctified the culture through their works of horror. Here then I invite the artist to embrace the idea of "true horror."

True horror treats good as good and evil as evil. False horror blurs them (so Constantine). True horror seeks to represent evil in all its rottenness, without demurring, without indulging. It reminds us of the slipperiness of evil, that even a saint has the capacity for great acts of evil. True horror dethrones absolute evil, and that is exactly what our relativistic, terrorist-spooked, faux-tolerant society needs.

True horror destabilizes us—carries us to the brink of our limitedness as humans and there forces us to confront the abyss of chaos that surrounds us, from which only God can save us. It questions our inordinate desire for comfort. Suddenness and surprise, staple devices of horror, rebuke our pretensions to control. We think we control things, with our paved highways, insulated homes, electronic gadgetry, but we don't, and the horror story keeps us humble. Horror deals with things beyond our control and thereby opens up for us the possibility of a savior.

True horror reminds us how profoundly moral our universe is. It reminds us, refreshingly, of simple things like good and evil, justice and mercy, courage and cowardice. True horror massages our intuition of the Divine. It reminds us of the great powers we possess to choose and to procreate, and by these choices either enhance or dull our moral intelligence.

We are all of us Edward Scissorhands

True horror, finally, makes possible an experience of grace. It suggests that we too are misshapen, we too are duped by evil. There is in us all a Mr. Hyde. We are all of us Edward Scissorhands. Looking at our deformed selves in the exaggerated characters on screen, we experience a cathartic release ("Thank God that isn't me!") or a genuine moment of self-knowledge ("Oh God, I need help!") which reminds us of the two-way movement of grace: grace for ourselves, grace for others.

The horror story, in the end, is a reminder that our present reality is disturbed and distorted. In the hands of the Christian, that reminder can become an invitation to redemption. Leave behind your claims to self-sufficiency! Stop trying to manage your life! Quit calling good evil! Do not be afraid of death! The horror story is not an escape from life, in all its wildness and terrible beauty; it is rather a way of walking through it, and as such a reminder that there is meaning, thanks be to God, in the middle of all the horror.

Sure, I still don't like watching horror movies at night, but at least I can rest in peace knowing that some of them are doing some good in the world.

David Taylor is the Arts Minister at Hope Chapel in Austin, Texas, director of The Ragamuffin Film Festival, and author of a series we ran last year about what it means to make a "good, Christian movie."

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