There is nothing wrong with a little fear. And by a little fear, I mean squeezing the nearest object until your knuckles turn white, covering your eyes and ears, scared to walk to the bathroom in the dark kind of fear. There is nothing wrong with that.

One of the best ways to endure this type of fear is by watching scary movies. And, with Halloween around the corner, scary movies will be watched everywhere.

Some people love them, some people hate them, and some people absolutely refuse to even watch a minute of them.

I am part of the first group; I love scary movies. I’ve been watching them with my siblings since I was about eleven years old.

I watch them with my friends as much as I can. I may be one of the only people who can watch scary movies for entertainment. There are a few types of scary movies.

The bloody genre

There’s the bloody movie, which is made to shock and disgust the viewer. An example of this type of movie would be “Hostel” or “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

These movies generally have poor characterization, very little dialogue and stereotypical characters (the good girl, the party girl, the overcompensating male who has to prove he’s a man by attacking the killer).

What is present in the movies, however, is blood. Lots and lots of blood. It’s meant to be gross and terrifying for the viewer, but chances are the person wouldn’t be left in a permanent state of paranoia over the whole thing. They’d still be able to walk around in the dark without fear of a monster being around the corner.

The psychological thriller 

Another type of scary movie is the psychological thriller. These are movies like “Saw” or “The Sixth Sense.” While these movies do have a shock factor to them, that’s not all there is too them.

These movies have more of a story to them, one that the viewer has to really pay attention to in order to understand. There’s also almost always a surprising, no-way-that-could-happen plot twist.

Again, these movies don’t necessarily get one scared to go places alone, but they definitely get the brain working; one will walk around for the next few hours trying to make sense of the whole thing.

The handheld camera genre

The third type of scary movie, and one of my personal favorites, is the “handheld camera” movie. This is the movie that brings the viewer right into the mix, as the whole thing is filmed with one person’s handheld video recorder, so the viewer does not get the advantage of knowing what’s behind the door, because they’re seeing it as the camera sees it.

The two most famous scary movies that are like this are “The Blair Witch Project” and “Paranormal Activity.” The lack of professional actors and seemingly amateur camera work makes these movies more relatable and give the viewer more of a “this could happen to me” feeling.

There are a lot of moments that will make the viewer jump, and they’ll for sure leave them feeling a little more paranoid at night.

The based-on- true-events genre

The last type of prominent scary movies is the “based-on-true-events” movie. These movies include ‘The Devil Inside,” “The Amityville Horror” and my new favorite: “The Conjuring.”

The movies based on true stories are always interesting to watch because as gross, scary or creepy they get, you always just keep thinking, “This actually happened to someone.”

Scary movies contain things that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares. In these types of movies, someone actually lived it. The fact that it’s based on a true story also creates more of an actual story, rather than just a string of scary events.

The characters are more defined, and the script is usually really good. These are movies that, if someone is not that into horror, he or she should watch, because there’s enough downtime between the scary events to calm down the racing heart.

Scary movies definitely aren’t something that one would just randomly choose to watch in the middle of the week because he or she is bored. They should definitely be a once in a while thing, because they do leave one in a state of fear and paranoia.

Watching a scary movie guarantees that you will spend the next few nights checking behind the shower curtain, running up the stairs as soon as the lights are turned off, and being afraid to hang your feet over the edge of the bed because something could grab you.

But that doesn’t mean that scary movies should be avoided. Just grab the Holy Water, avoid small children who say they have imaginary friends, don’t look in the mirrors or out of the windows, and enjoy a very scary Halloween.