Why Holocaust movies are uniquely terrifying, while Exorcism movies are hilarious.

Growing up around a gaggle of young Jews and agnostics forced me to see reality from an extremely young age.  As a young child you learn quickly that the tribe of people you come from was nearly exterminated in arguably history’s greatest atrocity.  They hammer this point home pretty hard at the synagogue.  So young Jewish Children, with the knowledge that half of your people were eliminated in the not so distant past, ask the obvious question, why the hell is everyone trying to kill us all the time; we must have done something awful.  Then you learn the truth and you have the greatest, wait, what?, moment of your life.  All of this hatred and killing over a perceived slight from a story over 2,000 years old that somehow manages to maintain its stranglehold on the mind of billions of humans, and has a habit of turning them into monsters who believe in things that are objectively insane related to a perceived outsized Jewish influence (space lasers?).  To clarify there are 15 million Jews currently living on Earth for a total of just under .2% of the world’s population; Mormons have a larger population.   Its difficult being the Worlds’ biggest historical scapegoat and having to imagine immediate family or distant relatives being systematically exterminated is sickening, and having to see it on film is both entirely necessary and absolutely horrifying at the same time.  It’s this strange dichotomy that makes these already difficult movies all the more horrifying, because it’s too real.  

Jerry Lewis, Jewish, famously made a film called The Day the Clown Cried, about an old Jewish clown who leads children into the gas chamber, a concept so revolting in its execution that he never released the film and refused anyone the right to see it until after he died (it can be a touchy subject).    Also don’t get me started about the piece of trash Life is Beautiful where Oscar Winner Roberto Benigni, not Jewish, tries to make the holocaust fun!   The holocaust is somewhat personal to me due to my heritage, and all movies about genocide have the ability to be the greatest horror films* as they cut right into the heart of man’s seemingly unending quest to annihilate himself.   We need no demons to fill our nightmares or visions of hell to keep us from sin, because we have been through that very fire here on earth for thousands of years, because well, that book.  

  So, watching the Zone of Interest or Schindler’s list for a Jewish person is essentially mandatory, but while it may be tough to watch for non-Jews, it turns into pure horror for Jews.  Not a scare around the next corner type of fear, but the stark reality that history has a way of repeating itself, which is not a good omen for the Jewish people.  Even now as a non-religious individual, I can’t divorce myself from the fact that I’m Jewish even if my father is Christian and our big winter holiday is Christmas.  I’m half of each Christian and Jew and don’t believe in organized religion, but that doesn’t mean that other people won’t label me when the time is right to blame the Jews, which seems like a default mode.  The gas chambers, incinerators, starvation, and all other likeminded versions of hell are burned into my memory and especially into those who lost their entire families.  This in turn made the remaining Jews super militant which is where we find ourselves today.  I feel this way about all human suffering no matter who is the aggressor.  My heart aches when I watch brilliant documentaries about people helping to document and save lives in modern genocides like Ukraine’s 20 Days in Mariupol or Syria’s For Sama, to other movies about genocides like Indonesia’s The Act of Killing, Bosnia’s Quo Vadis, Aida?, and Poland’s Katyn.   I can’t help to relate to the suffering of these marginalized people and hurt for all the innocents who are being slaughtered for no earthly reason.  Do I anticipate horrifying documentaries and films about the plight of people in Gaza, absolutely.  Will I feel the same about them as I do about people that were technically related to me but who I never knew?  You betcha.   But that’s all I want to say in relation to current events without throwing a Molotov cocktail onto the already raging bonfire.  

It seems like we have enough real-world events terrible enough to dramatically raise one’s horror meter.  Like Belinda Carlisle sang, "ooo’ hell is a place on earth", or something like that.  But for some, there are supernatural, mystical entities that can invade a person’s soul and cause them to act demonic.  Eternal torture has to really linger over believers because it sounds like a pretty crappy place.  Fun fact, even though Judaism and Christianity are literally the same religion with one being a sequel with a messianic figure; Jews do not believe in hell in the same way Christians constantly have the concept hanging over their heads.  There are no fire and brimstone sermons, especially in the Reform Temple I belonged too as a kid (less religious than Jewish Conservatives and Orthodox). So, when you gather a bunch of teenagers on Halloween who don’t believe that the devil or hell are real supernatural entities instead of the mythological implications of said story and you have them watch a horror marathon, what do you think the reaction would be.  I’ve heard of stories of theater owners hiring ambulances in 1972/3 to help people who would pass out from being terrified by the Exorcist.  The Exorcist is a classic horror movie that is one of the few of its genre that was nominated for Best Picture so we were excited to get to see such a scary movie.  If there had been a recording of that evening you would have seen a lot of laughter, and sheer confused delight as to why people had considered this to be so innately terrifying.  I’m pretty sure we were more afraid of Jason X, and that’s the one where they are in future space and Jason kills everyone on a spaceship including the famous scene where he beats a guy to death in a sleeping bag with another guy in a sleeping bag: brilliant. 

This is not an anti-possession movie article, its anti-exorcism article.  You can have a movie with someone being possessed by another entity and be scary as hell, even for non-believers, but as soon as you bring a priest into the game, yelling bible verses at a disturbed child, while she self-harms in disgusting ways, you’re going to lose every person who doesn’t believe in the big origin story (bible).   You can have a movie that includes the devil and possession and still be terrifying like one of my favorite horror films’ Robert Eggers, The Witch, but without the generic exorcism scene that has become rote where the possessed talks in a bunch of different voices or languages and body contorts in impossible ways.  Here’s the thing, people like me don’t need fiction and supernatural entities to feel fear.  Humanity combined with a healthy dose of reality is far more terrifying then the stories we make up it our heads.  Humans treat each other horribly.  This has been the case for our ENTIRE history.  We’ve been inventing reasons to torture and murder and terrorize our fellow humans since we began our conquest of the planet some 10,000 years ago.   Want to see something scary?  Watch a documentary like Chasing Ice, and look at Greenland falling into the Ocean, which will lead to inevitable sea-levels rising and forcing migration for billions of people who live near the water, and will soon be underneath it.  Watch a purely visual documentary like Koyaanisqatsi, showing the struggle for survival and nonstop pursuit of prosperity for cultures all over the world will overwhelm you with the negative impact humankind has had to both ourselves and the planet we inhabit, for now.  The world is scary, but if you come up to me and say you’re possessed by a demon and need an exorcist, I, without batting an eye, would kindly try to get that individual the mental health they need and deserve in a just society.  Instead of praying the devil out of people, maybe try to, I don’t know, be as kind and helpful as possible, and steer those people to places that can actually help. 

The only thing scary about the concept of exorcisms is the negative connotation it has with people who have mental health diagnoses, such as me.   It’s not hard for me to place myself in a time and place where mental health issues were treated as demonic.   For that reason, after laughing, my second reaction to exorcism films is probably anger for the same reason.  It’s not like I can’t suspend my disbelief in order to not be afraid of things I don’t believe in, but it’s that same conviction and belief that other people who do believe that prevents me from feeling fear.  Irrational fear causes things like the holocaust and exorcisms, and it’s not fun being at the receiving end of both.  It’s also not scary.  It’s rote.  It’s boring, been there, done that.   For thousands of years Jews and people with mental illness, as well as billions of marginalized people from all over the world have gotten the short end of the very painful stick.  I only combine those first two as that helps to describe why holocaust movies subjectively scare me to my very core, and why I would want to kick an exorcist’s ass.  

Occam’s razor:  What’s more likely… a fallen angel from the bible turns into a demon and possesses innocents in order to screw with life on Earth, or the person has a mental disorder and needs legitimate treatment.   When phrased like that it seems like a no brainer, but the current behavior and reasoning among many seems compelled to believe in the validity of the former.   There may be people who read this who believe in their religion who are legitimately terrified of these things because they were raised with it as a fact of life, just like my friends and I are terrified of the real world crashing down on us again.   Does this mean that exorcism movies are objectively dumb?  Nope.  This is my way of thinking that was fostered through years of personal experience that shapes what I find scary and what I find silly.   I wrote this to try to explain the perspective of a certain group of people.  For some, real life is far more terrifying than anyone can dream up.  I can only imagine how scary an exorcism movie is for somehow who was raised in the church and truly believes.  The idea of everlasting torture sounds pretty brutal and I don’t love the idea of losing my body functions to a demon.   If I believed in hell and demons, the exorcist would have scared the crap out of me.  It’s fascinating how one’s upbringing and beliefs can create vastly different responses to things like horror movies.  There is no right answer.  It’s just the best guess I have.