Igrew up scared of everything: death, the dark, my own face in the bathroom mirror.

Eventually, I learned my bottomless fear belied several anxiety and anxiety-adjacent disorders that I’ve been addressing in adulthood with the help of therapy, medication, and an unlikely third salve: ravenous horror-film consumption.

Contagion got me through the first night of lockdown in 2020, and Daddy’s Head helped me unleash pent-up tears around the anniversary of my dad’s death. I felt my own unspeakable rage and grief mingle with the Graham family’s around the dinner table in Hereditary , and my hopelessness and meanness during a particularly bad period transmute into senseless murder across a breathtaking stretch of the Australian outback in Wolf Creek .

Though this kind of catharsis is

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