Scary Movies

In an attempt to catch up with some Oscar nominations I've missed, I've turned to my trusty Netflix queue and rented a few nominees. Two of them are quite scary, but in entirely different ways.

First was Monster House, one of three films nominated for Best Animated Feature. I'd already seen Cars, and Happy Feet is still in theaters, but I'm loathe to actually pay money for a film and be surrounded by wild toddlers. Monster House is on DVD, and I saw the first hour of it. Unfortunately, it had some scratches on it and became unwatchable, and at a critical time in the movie, too. So I have to wait for a replacement disc, one of the drawbacks of Netflix.

In any event, I enjoyed the first hour very much. This is an animated film more for tweeners than very small children, as a child under eight would probably find it too scary. It concerns three children who are out to solve the mystery of a mysterious house across the street, that was once the home of a mean old man, the type that takes your ball when it comes into his lawn. The horror becomes pretty intense in spots, particularly when the house, which becomes a large head, complete with teeth, tongue, and eyes, swallows up a couple of policeman, and when the kids stumble upon the burial mound of the old man's wife, whose remains were embedded in cement. Spooky!

A film that is far scarier because it is real is Jesus Camp, one of the five films nominated for Best Documentary Feature (the only other nominee I've seen is An Inconvenient Truth, another scary movie). It features evangelical Christians, specifically a youth minister named Becky Fischer, who every year has a camp for kids in North Dakota (the name of the town is Devil's Lake, which is unintentionally hilarious). The core of this woman's belief is that children form their belief systems at a young age, so she wants to get to 'em early, molding them into warriors for Christ. I am most certainly not a Christian, though I was born into that gene pool. I have no problem with people gathering together and worshipping anyway they please, but when they start saying things like, "Taking back the country in the name of Christ," I get concerned. I'm as secular as the day as long, so I'm the type of person that finds this sort of thing hair-raising.

The filmmakers, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, take an objective viewpoint, and let the words and actions of the participants paint themselves as the intolerant, hate-mongering bigots that they are. Ms. Fischer, early on, talks about how Islam trains their children so they are so indoctrinated that they will become suicide bombers, and she wants to do the same thing for Christians. It makes one do a double-take: did she really say she wants Christian children to go on suicide missions? Also, in this form of Pentecostalism, there is an us versus them mentality. If you are not a rabid Christian, then you are an other, and there is something wrong with you. One little girl disparages churches other than her own as "dead churches," because people don't jump and scream hallelujah! God does not come to those churches, we are told. Ah yes, "You've got to be taught to hate," so the song goes.

It's one thing for adults to believe this, but to see children sold this malarkey is bone-chilling. It's also disheartening to see what killjoys the adults are, pointing out how Harry Potter would be put to death by Old Testament law, and told to stop telling ghost stories. Instead they are encourage to go up to strangers and proselytize, surely one way to lose friends if there ever was one.

Perhaps most insidious is the political message that is filtered into these children's minds. At camp a cardboard cut-out of President Bush is brought forward, and the kids say a prayer for him. Obviously their prayers weren't working too well during the mid-term elections. They are told that creationism is the only answer to our questions, and that global warming is a hoax, and that science doesn't prove anything. I'm surprised there wasn't a ritual burning of microscopes. Abortion, of course, is a big no-no, and the kids are propped in front of the Supreme Court building, singing hymns.

This is a fascinating film on anthropological and psychological terms. Surely what is going on here is brainwashing, and the evangelical movement is a cult not much different than what David Koresh was doing in Waco. The filmmakers use a liberal Christian broadcaster to occasionally sprinkle some sanity on the proceedings. He has Fischer on his show, and tells us there is a difference between learning, which is being presented with multiple viewpoints and allowing for a choice, and indoctrination. Fischer reveals her true colors when she says that democracy, as good a system as it is, will eventually destroy itself. Hard-core Christians don't want to live in a democracy, and are fundamentally un-American. They want to live in a theocracy, which is as far as what Jefferson and his brethren wanted as you can get.

The filmmakers also got lucky by including footage of Ted Haggard, the former president of the Evangelical Association, who resigned in disgrace after it was revealed that he had a liaison with a male prostitute. It brings to mind what Max Von Sydow's character says in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters: "If Jesus ever came back, and heard what was being said in his name, he'd never stop throwing up."

I'm of the belief that behavior like speaking in tongues and visions and seeing evil in things that are fun like Harry Potter (and probably Monster House) is a psychosis. Jesus Camp does nothing to change that belief.