ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

So it’s October, which means Halloween is coming up and people are getting interested in horror movies again. There are plenty of scary movie lists out there, but we all have different tastes, so I thought I would add my own list to the pile at one movie a day. These are the scary movies I could watch over and over again.

10. Se7en (1995) ~ The evangelical in me enjoys a well-done horror movie with a religious theme, and only three movies on my list fit that bill (although many others will receive honorable mentions). Se7en is one of them, drawing the title from its villain who kills people using methods that illuminate what he views as the victim’s violations of the seven deadly sins. The concept of “seven deadly sins” isn’t found anywhere in the Bible by the way, but who’s counting?

The cast includes Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow and Morgan Freeman, who is always full of win no matter what he plays. All three of them are great in their roles. I’m not a huge fan of Paltrow in real life (“Apple is a biblical name!”*), but she delivers a very emotional turn as Tracy Mills. The scene where she discusses her unwanted pregnancy with Freeman’s character is definitely memorable.

What makes this movie so scary is, of course, the methods in which the villain, John Doe, executes his victims. A morbidly obese man forced to eat obscene amounts of spaghetti then kicked in the gut to make his stomach explode, a model having her nose cut off, then given the option of committing suicide or calling for help and living with a marred face. I’m not even going to repeat what happened to the victim of lust.

Paltrow famously explained to Oprah that she named her daughter Apple because, “It sounded so sweet and it conjured such a lovely picture for me – you know, apples are so sweet and they’re wholesome and it’s biblical – and I just thought it sounded so lovely and … clean! And I just thought, ‘Perfect!’” She’s obviously referring to how the fruit of forbidden knowledge in the Garden of Eden is often depicted as an apple, but the Bible only calls it “fruit.” Apples get some minor mentions elsewhere in the Bible, but “Apple” is no more a biblical name than “Roebuck” or “Pole.” In other words, people who don’t actually read the Bible should not try to give their kids unique biblical names. It never ends well.

/endrant