When horror stops being comforting

I've been thinking about horror a lot lately. 'Tis the season for it, after all, and a new Silent Hill is out, so I've been spending some time considering why I've lined up a series of horror films to watch, but can't bring myself to play a scary game right now.

I love horror movies. I find them comforting. Yes, I know that's an odd thing to say about a genre that's designed to be unsettling, but hear me out. At their core, horror movies are simple: a Bad Thing wants to do you harm. If you're smart enough, tough enough, or lucky enough (preferably all three), you will defeat it and survive. That appeals to my ravenous desire to exert control over the uncontrollable. Whatever the issue is, be it a serial killer, environmental disaster, or supernatural force, there would be a plan, a course of action, a thing to try. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but at least if I go down, I go down swinging.

The experience with horror games is a little different. First, movies only have a couple of hours at most to get in everything they have to say, so the threat and the stakes are made clear very quickly. Games don't have those constraints so it often takes longer to figure out not just what the Bad Thing is, but what you can actually do about it. Another key difference is of course agency; with movies you're watching as other people make decisions, whereas whatever happens in a game — good or bad — is your fault. The ability to influence events is the whole reason to play a game instead of watching a movie, but it's also why I find myself freezing at the very thought of picking up something like Silent Hill: Townfall right now.

The world right now is...let's be generous and just call it stressful. It's been that way for over a decade, really, and my ability to roll with the punches has been dropping steadily as time has worn on. My personal life the past year hasn't helped matters; my mother developed dementia, my husband lost his job. I don't remember the last time I felt anything other than anxious and afraid of whatever terrible thing was going to happen next. I've spent years fearing that I was one bad choice or unlucky day away from complete ruin.

Which is why I can't play scary games right now. In horror games, uncertainty is the point. You're not supposed to know what's going or what to do about it; being uncomfortable and surrounded by weird and scary things is part of the fun. Under normal circumstances, your life is pretty boring. You do the same things with the same people in the same way pretty much every day. Sometimes there's a wedding or it rains, but mostly, you know what's going to happen, which is why departures from normalcy can be entertaining. A haunted town full of shambling monsters is a wonderful diversion from remembering to set the chicken out to thaw. But when you're careening from one unprecedented event to the next, that kind of confusion loses its luster.

Allow me a moment to distinguish between uncertainty and mystery. The two are related, but not the same. A mystery is a question with an answer, and crucially, whatever is presenting the mystery wants you to solve it. You're given hints and clues to help you piece together the solution. So there is a period of not knowing, but what you don't know gets smaller as you go. Uncertainty doesn't work like that. It exists to keep you on your back foot so that you never feel like you have the proper criteria to make a confident choice. If you know what you're doing, you're less likely to be scared, so well-crafted horror games constantly change the rules on you. It's good design, but not something I am equipped to weather when real life is doing the same thing on a daily basis.

I know the stakes of a video game aren't real. If I die wandering through the misty streets of a coastal Scottish town, I can just reload and try again. But the part of my brain that's been on high alert for the past several years can't distinguish faux threat from real and just shuts it all down before I can pick up the controller. It's not a choice, it's self preservation.

Games have gotten me through some of the hardest parts of my life, and they'll get me through this, too. Someday I'll be ready to return to Silent Hill. Just not today.