Warm colors sharpen as the focus reveals an image of a boy. He sits slouched and light reflects off his glasses and sweaty face. From offscreen, a voice tells him to take off his glasses to reduce the glare.
Boy: But I won’t be able to see.
Offscreen: It doesn’t matter. Just talk.
Boy: Okay. (Takes off glasses) How is this?
Offscreen: You look like a mole. I mean, it’s good.
Boy: What do you want me to say?
Offscreen: Just talk about your favorite scary movies.
Boy: Gee, there are so many.
Offscreen: Well, what type of horror do you like best?
Boy: I guess I like slasher movies a lot. I just watched Halloween again recently.
Offscreen: The original?
Boy: Yeah. I think Mike Meyers is the epitome of movie villains because he’s based on urban legends, which, for all intents and purposes, are real enough.
Offscreen: What do you mean?
Boy: He is the perfect example of the faceless stranger who watches us from the street at night. Or the robber who enters our house when we’re asleep. Or the sound of footsteps that signify our impending doom. We can’t lie to ourselves and say that it’s just a bad dream, or that these monsters don’t exist. Despite what the numerous reincarnations and sequels would suggest, he was just a regular human once. The most effective horror villain has always been your neighbor. Killers are us, or what we have the potential to become.
Offscreen: Don’t they mention something like that in the original Dawn of the Dead?
Boy: Yeah, I like zombie movies for that reason too. And vampire movies. That dude in Dawn of the Dead—
Offscreen: Ken Foree.
Boy: Yeah, he has that line about the zombies: “We are them; they are us.” But those movies are different because they deal with what we could become. That familiarity is especially noticeable in those fucked-up scenes where someone the character knows—a loved one, family member, child—becomes a zombie or vampire or whatever and they have to kill it. It’s actually more tragic than terrifying.
Offscreen: That’s why they have to pile on the gore—to counteract the philosophizing and all that. Zombie movies have imagined every possible way that a human can get opened up.
Boy: Well yeah. That kind of segues into body horror, another genre I really like. Movies where change is going on inside you, stuff that you can’t control. Alien, The Fly … I guess most stuff made by Cronenburg.
Offscreen: Oh yeah. Shivers used to be called They Came from Within.
Boy: Right, when you can’t control what’s going on with your body. (Pause) Was that good? Did you get everything you needed?
Offscreen: Yeah, thanks. (Pause) You know what, Greg?
Boy: What?
Offscreen: You’re a big fucking nerd, you know that?
The boy laughs and the image goes black.