Description

At a late-night diner, four friends have a hilarious conversation about movie monsters, specifically “which kind of monster is the scariest and, psychologically speaking, why?”  The four lessons are that 1) no monster is the scariest, since they’re the most frightening when they’re unknown and our brains fills in our own details; 2) our social and physical fears around sex and rape; 3) we love spectacularly destroying zombies so much because they are us but without all of the positive qualities of humanity; and 4) zombies can be seen as an exaggeration of what liberals hate about conservatives, while vampires represent what conservatives hate about liberals – and monsters generally are about what we fear of the other.

Warning: this video should be for high school age students, or more mature middle schoolers.

Discussion Questions

• What are some other examples of each kind of scary monster?
• What do you think of each of these reasons for why monsters are so scary? Do you agree or disagree, and why?
• What other reasons can you think of for what makes scary monsters so scary?

Keywords: fear, fiction, monsters, movies, rape, sex, vampires, violence, zombies, art, analysis, psychology