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1

The police sirens pierced the air and the squad car’s light bar flickered from red to blue and back again atop the vehicle. The target? A dark gray four-door Buick raced at sixty-five miles per hour along the rural road. The car spewed dirt, rocks, and gravel along the bent roadway. A series of farmhouses and the acreage that came with them blurred as they passed. Both cars’ headlights illuminated the night.

Inside the car, the late-thirties, blond white male patrol officer gunned the engine to sixty-five. Now it raced alongside the Buick. In the passenger seat was his late-twenties, raven-haired, white female partner. She braced herself with a straight forearm against the dashboard as she watched their prey.

“They’re ready to run out of road!” she said.

“Their problem!”

A veer in the road caused the police cruiser to ease its speed. That’s that. The Buick floored it and cut the sharp right at the bend with dirt cloud camouflage that made Houdini proud. Both occupants in the cruiser shifted left and right to track the target. When the road’s rocks and dirt stopped playing ping pong with the windshield, they had their answer.

“Gone?” she asked.

“Smoke trails anywhere?”

The cops perused the night’s scenes. Nothing. Not one thing. The man stopped the car and spoke into his shoulder mike.

“Suspects disappeared. Repeat, suspects have evaded capture in a dark gray, 2005 Buick LeSabre. APB for Caine Valentine, white male, blonde, six-foot-one inches, 170 pounds. Ronald LeMay, white male, dark hair, six-foot-two inches, 180 pounds. Both men suspected of robbing the Red Barn Savings & Loan tonight. Both men named on the Georgia Sex Offender Registry–”

He cut off his sentence. She felt his anger too.

“They’re off the grid. They’re off the grid serial rapists and child molesters over,” he said.

“Copy that. Continue to search. Will APB, over.”

“Copy that dispatch.”

They displayed disgust.

“If ever we needed to catch lowlifes, it’s those two,” she said.

“We will. But lots of farms, fields, and dirt roads–”

“Got it, okay? We continue to look. We’ll get them. Let’s go.”

He cranked the engine. The cruiser’s searchlight lit up the night and uncovered shadows amongst shadows on everything in sight. Nothing. The road ahead narrowed until it dead-ended at a closed fence with a block-lettered sign that read, ‘KEEP OUT Trespassers Will Be Shot.’

“Well, maybe they went in there. We’ll wait for the corpses to show.”

He agreed with her. “That’s affirmative.”

With that, he drove and reversed the vehicle several times and righted its course for the same path it took to get to this spot. In seconds, they left.

***

Left of that sign through a small breach in the decrepit wooden fence a giant field of haystacks that sat as high as ten feet. Movement on both sides of one. Mouths coughed and wheezed for several seconds. Metal creaked and then slammed shut. Twice. The hay flew with successive swooshes in the still night. Four arms flailed the bodies they belonged to toward liberty. Two men emerged hay covered, tense, and paranoid.

“Freedom, Caine!”

“Hey, keep your voice down, Ronnie! We ain’t freed yet until we bolt this hick town, got it?”

Ronnie’s enthusiasm subsided with his hands. He motioned for Caine to calm himself.

“Keep watch for a second.”

Ronnie did as Caine checked beneath the haystack at the ground. He growled as he rose again.

“Man, we got two flats when we smashed through the fence.”

“We got a spare, Caine–”

“Sure, we do. Be we ain’t got no donut which means we stuck. We need wheels and we need ‘em now.

They scouted the terrain for a breakthrough.

“Okay, we each carry a duffel bag–”

“Five million each! Wow!” Ronnie said.

Caine rushed him with violence on his mind.

“I ain’t gonna tell you again. Shut up. Grab the bags and follow the haystacks. I bet we can find shelter in one of these old barns or something.

“I’m ready to eat this hay, Caine.”

Caine’s face lessened its intensity. He shook Ronnie by the back of the neck, smirked and replied.

“Ten million dollars can buy you hay and anything else you want, buddy. Let’s go.”

Ronnie smiled, and they jogged amidst the massive piles of straw.

After they walked for thirty minutes, the pair riveted on a small crowd of people. They sat atop trimmed green grass, others stood, and others ran everywhere. As they closed the distance to the assembly, they viewed each other. Four young women and a dozen children about ages six months to six years old. Even gender split as far as they could tell. Like wolves who spotted their prey, the men studied one another first, then focused on the group.

“You see that, Ronnie?”

“I think so. But I’ll tell you what I don’t see too. I don’t see no men, Caine. I don’t see no men anywhere.”

His lips quivered just a touch as his gray eyes coveted the prospects before them.

“Now, I bet you they holed up inside, Ronnie. We play this right, we got ‘em. Steal their car and snatch as many as we want. With ten million, we can take ‘em anywhere in the country. But we gotta play this smart as we ever have before together and when we worked apart. You hear me?”

“Heard and understood.”

Caine led the way along the outskirts of the assembly. Tall trees and the woods helped to cover their reconnaissance. They stooped along the ground to the right of congregation. That’s when they noticed it together.

“Where they cars?” Ronnie asked.

“They got to be here somewhere!”

“Now whose voice needs to quiet.”

“Don’t even start that with me, Ronnie! Let’s go.”

Several more feet. No vehicles. Not even a tractor or lawn mower sighted.

“Let’s check up that way.”

Ronnie just nodded at the suggestion and onward they went. After twenty more minutes, they spied an old, barren, and secluded farmhouse. Naked trees arched their gnarly, ashen limbs everywhere. They readied to reach out and to help someone or to hurt someone.

Close to that sat an old but large cemetery full of archaic headstones. It’s quiet. Too quiet.

“Man, where are we goin’, Caine? Let’s go back and get's that action, huh?”

“We will, we will. Car first, then we have fun.”

Ronnie’s malicious smile morphed his face.

“You know I ain’t had a little one for a long time. Seein’ them back there together was more than my heart can stand. Let’s get those cars. Now!”

Caine grabbed Ronnie after they both jogged another few feet, mounted a woods and tree dominated hill, descended, turned to the opened ground, and froze. This time Ronnie grabbed Caine and yanked him to the ground. Horror filled Ronnie’s visage. Caine looked at him a second, then took in what mesmerized his partner. A bunch of people mumblin’ something by tombstones. As they kneeled upon the dead grass, every one of them adorned black robes with hoods that covered their heads. The group moved in perfect synchronization. One person stood as the vocals synched as well and arose to a feverish pitch. When he raised his hands, movement and decibels ceased. A male voice spoke next.

“All hail our Lord and Master.

The others repeated after him.

“All hail our Lord and Master.”

Caine and Ronnie dared not to move.

The person who stood continued.

“He has brought it to my attention it’s time. We have come so far so fast. But we are far from finished with the work our Master has called us to complete. Despite evidence to the contrary, not everyone is onboard.”

That person with the masculine voice strolled between those who kneeled in the circle. His shadow draped over each hooded member as he did.

“Who can we trust when the trustworthy betray our just cause? You know it’s his and my way or death. Nothing more, nothing less. Complete obedience to us and to do our will.”

As he walked, his hands disappeared into his robe’s pockets and as reflected in the full moonlight, a pair of golden blade daggers rested in his palms.

“We know a breach of unity that dismembers our collective obedience requires a sacrifice. I and the Master will need nothing less. Now, bow before me.”

The visitors fought the ‘fight or flight’ syndrome that raced through their bodies.

The faces bowed before the ground with arms extended forward. The male who spoke stood behind one kneeler. He tapped the shoulders of two persons who kneeled on each side of the person before the male leader. With cat reflexes, they gripped a white man’s arms. Those daggers slammed into the man’s pinned to the ground hands. He screamed as others broke the circle. They hogtied, gagged, and carried him off above their heads away from the cemetery.

A wicked glee changed the surprised looks of Caine and Ronnie now. A huge tree that stood thirty to forty feet high contained a thick, knotty limb of eight to ten feet long with a noose hung from it. The male voice commanded the others to slip his feet into the gap. Done, they pulled it so tight it caused a gagged whimper from the terrified white man.

Other hooded members doused a massive woodpile with gasoline. That male voice ordered two lit torches tossed onto the pile. With a whoosh, the flame shot upward and outward just out of reach from the hung victim. The others stripped the man of his robe and left him in his undergarments and socks.

“We need a sacrifice by bloodshed for selfishness. I can still hear the voice of your brother’s blood cry out. You share everything even your wife with whoever wants her, and that includes your brother. I pronounce you cursed from the earth which received his blood from your betrayal and like the Judas you are so too shall your entrails burst as you burn with hellfire in condemnation!”

The man handled those daggers again and sliced with uncanny speed and precision a myriad of cuts across the hung man’s abdomen. When the last cut ripped the gag off his mouth, he screamed and squirmed. With a simple nod, three members loosened their grip on the rope and the man fell headlong into the inferno. After a shortened period, the man ceased any noise and movement.

Another of the robbed members handed the male voice a towel to clean off the daggers, which he hid again in the robe’s pockets. That member tossed the towel into the fire as the others peered in morbid fascination.

A cell phone rang from the inside the male voice’s robe. He waited for a spell before he spoke.

“I told you that the great threat on the horizon will not be a problem. The Black Robe Masters will summon our unseen allies and destroy them.”    

Satisfied, he returned the cell inside his robe when he stopped. He studied his other worshippers, they reciprocated, then he pivoted toward Caine and Ronnie. His followers duplicated that move too.

“Oh, no, no, Caine. He saw us!”

“No, Ronnie! They saw us! Let’s go!”

With that, the pair bolted upright. They used the same direction as before, inched their way back up that hill, and crashed with no aplomb. The millions of stolen dollar bags bashed against their ribs as the twosome fought a lost battle with their fears.

They huffed and puffed, tripped and fell, helped each other up, and left each other in their wakes. At last, they reached that house of women and children. They ran around the back for them. Only the women present, their presence sent them into a tizzy.

“Oh!” a red-haired lady said.

“Who are you?” the blond-haired woman asked.

“And what do you want?” a brunette lady asked.

Caine stuck his hand up in self-defense.

“Listen, we mean you no harm now. We want a car. That’s it.”

Ronnie’s glances said otherwise.

“Naw, that ain’t it.”

“Hey, focus! Who's got the keys? Hey! Hey!”

“Today, ladies!” Ronnie said.

The red-haired lady in her early forties complied and tossed them to Caine. The other three closed the gap to the criminals. Caine reached into his bag and exposed a.45 caliber handgun.

“I don’t want to use this, but I will. Which car is it?”

The redhead eased her arms about Caine’s neck and the blond copied her. The brunette and another blond surrounded Ronnie. His lust meter kicked into immediate overdrive. Caine slowed this test of potential suitors out. Though his flesh desired the same thing.

“Ain’t no time for this here, ma’am. If there was, I can promise you, you’d never forget it. Believe me,” Caine said.

“Yeah, believe us both. I ain’t never had two at one time. Ah, man, just a quickie, Caine. Think they didn’t see us?”

“No names!”

The redhead spoke.

“It doesn’t matter, boys. He knows your name. A father knows the names of all his children.”

“Father? What father?” Caine asked.

A sudden rush of wind so putrid, both men gag reflexed. With that wind a shadow so dark and expansive it absorbed the lights in the house. They experienced such blackness a void in space couldn’t even match it. A gruff voice with an eerie calm sweetness to it emitted.

“I believe you have something that belongs to us.”

The criminals responded with fear.

“Take–take the–the keys! We don’t want ‘em!” Caine said.

“Yeah, just let us go!”

That gruff voice echoed through the masses:

“Oh, you have something else that belongs to us too.”

Without notice, a multitude of red eyes dotted the room. Those in unison gruff voices announced:

“We believe you’ll serve him well.”

Objects crashed against one another. Screams of torture, mouths that growled, and teeth that gnashed drowned out everything else in the room.

Why the Popularity of Horror Movies Might Encourage Christians

FEBRUARY 8, 2018 | Mike Duran

THE GOSPEL COALITION (TGC) U.S. EDITION

The New York Times called 2017 “The Biggest Year in Horror History.” Fueled by the runaway success of films like Get Out and It, last year proved to be the highest-grossing year for horror movies in box-office history. Horror has become one of Hollywood’s most bankable genres, leading some to ask, “Can horror movies save Hollywood?”

The ongoing appeal of the genre should interest Christians. What does its surging popularity tell us about ourselves and our world?

Some speculate that horror helps us grapple with societal and psychological tensions, providing a type of cathartic viewing experience. Others cite the visceral, emotive pull of horror, its ability to grab us and give us a rush.

It’s also possible, of course, that horror movies are popular simply because people like the gory violence and sexual exploitation that is often (sadly) pervasive in these films. It could be that horror simply mirrors our own depravity and provides a gateway for darkness and the demonic.

While there’s some truth to all these theories, there’s also reason to consider other, nobler, spiritual dynamics that might contribute to our attraction to horror. As Christians we should certainly exercise caution and discernment when approaching the horror genre. But perhaps we might also consider how its  continued popularity reflects an intuitive, God-given sense of morality, mortality, and our need to “kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.”

1. Horror speaks to the fallenness of our world.

“We are all like the moon,” Mark Twain quipped. “We each have a dark side.” Indeed, history bears constant witness to this truth. Gulags, torture chambers, lynch mobs, serial murders, and mass shootings litter our historical landscape. The Bible also bears witness to it. Whether Noah’s drunkenness, David’s adultery, or Peter’s denial, Scripture doesn’t spare us the dark flaws of even its more faithful heroes. Every Jekyll has its Hyde.

Conceding human fallenness and our propensity to do evil is intrinsic to a biblical worldview. And it’s also a staple of the horror genre.

In Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, Cornelius Plantinga notes that “even when it is familiar, sin is never normal.” The very notion of “sin” or “evil” appeals to a standard of goodness that has been transgressed. Whether it’s a dystopian future, a serial murderer, or a glimpse into hell, the horror genre appeals to our inherent sense that the world is not the way it’s supposed to be. And we cringe at its defilement.

Whether it’s a dystopian future, a serial murderer, or a glimpse into hell, the horror genre appeals to our inherent sense that the world is not the way it’s supposed to be. And we cringe at its defilement.

The Girl with All the Gifts (2017) offers a fresh take on the zombie genre, grounding the real horror not in the soulless “hungries,” as they’re called, but in the humans willing to disregard moral lines in order to survive. The Walking Dead charts a similar course, portraying the living as just as deadly as the living dead. The abnormality is both outside and inside us.

Another thematic element that riffs on our innate sense of normal is the “science gone awry” motif. Placing our trust in science, technology, and humanity, rather than in God, can yield some of the most horrific visions imaginable.

In David Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly (1986), Jeff Goldblum plays a scientist who, through a tragic lab mishap, is genetically melded with an insect. The horror is not just in the film’s gruesome special effects, but also in witnessing the scientist’s slow loss of his humanity. The popular Netflix series Black Mirror paints a bleak near-future landscape where technology shapes, and often drains, its users of their humanity. Far from a utopia, the show imagines a world in which science only amplifies our sin. In so doing, Black Mirror(among other dystopian books and films) reinforces a vital biblical theme: man is broken. No amount of moral or technological tweaks can correct the malfunction that is us. Only through the bloody, fittingly horrific death of Christ on the cross can the horror of our own desperate plight be redeemed.

Only through the bloody, fittingly horrific death of Christ on the cross can the horror of our own desperate plight be redeemed.

The popularity of the horror genre may be a collective subconscious affirmation that the world is not the way it’s supposed to be, that moral darkness encroaches all around, both inside and outside us. Without redemption we know dystopia is inevitable. Yet to reflect on our fallenness, we must also invoke Eden. We can only recognize that horror is horrific because we recognize what is good and glorious.

2. Horror speaks to the supernatural, immaterial parts of our world.

Not all horror contains supernatural elements. Some films, like last year’s Split, root the “demonic” purely in the human psyche. Nevertheless, much of contemporary horror assumes a supernatural worldview and an afterlife—which is significant at a time when secularism is on the rise.

Perhaps most obvious is the perennial popularity of movies involving demonic activity, possessions, and exorcism. One critic traced a then-recent spate of such films back to The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), writing:

The film was heavily targeted to the evangelical market. They’re not the first audience you think of when you talk about over-the-top horror films, but to evangelical audiences, The Exorcism of Emily Rose wasn’t just a horror bash—it was practically a documentary. And it opened the floodgates to a rash of exorcist films that have been playing out the primal clash of good and evil ever since.

This “primal clash of good and evil” is practically status quo for the genre. Indeed, horror films frequently appeal to these moral opposites and a non-physical dimension where their battles play out. The Conjuring franchise, for example, follows Catholic paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren as they investigate alleged hauntings. The first film concludes with a harrowing exorcism scene followed by these un-subtle closing lines:

Diabolical forces are formidable. These forces are eternal and they exist today. The fairy tale is true. The Devil exists. God exists. And for us, as people, our very destiny hinges upon which one we elect to follow.

Although most horror films aren’t as blatant about God, the Devil, and spiritual warfare, many assume the existence of the supernatural. Paranormal Activity was one of the most profitable releases of 2009 and spawned four additional installments. The films assume that a spiritual dimension exists (in fact, the final installment in 2015 is titled The Ghost Dimension) and is occupied, in part, by evil entities. The series eventually traces the “paranormal activity” back to the protagonist’s grandmother, her involvement in witchcraft, and the arrival of an “invisible friend.”

While not typically theologically orthodox, movies about the Devil, or other forms of supernatural and existential terrors, instinctively imply the existence of something even more primal and powerful than those terrors: God. Or as Michael, the skeptical American seminary student in The Rite (2011) proclaims, “I believe in the Devil, and so I believe in God!”

While not always theologically orthodox, movies about the Devil, or other forms of supernatural and existential terrors, instinctively imply the existence of something even more primal and powerful than those terrors: God.

3. Horror speaks to fighting and conquering darkness.

While some object to the horror genre on the grounds that it seems to depict the triumph of evil, the reality is most horror films depict the collision of light and darkness, good wrestling against evil. Indeed, even films that show darkness winning evoke the instinctive belief that good should prevail against evil.

Horror films may often depict evil triumphing over good, but it is a “triumph” we are challenged to thwart.

Thwarting evil takes on many different forms in the canon of horror. In last year’s adaptation of Stephen King’s It, the power of friendship and camaraderie ultimately overcomes the darkness (see also: Stranger Things). That’s why Pennywise, the ghastly clown, seeks to separate his adversaries and pit them against one another. In countless films, love breaks the shroud of darkness.

In countless films, love breaks the shroud of darkness.

A classic example of the enduring struggle against darkness may be Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Unlike many trends in contemporary vampire mystique, Stoker’s vampire is not glorified, romanticized, or portrayed as anything but a vile, hellish being, the spawn of Satan, a creature cursed and damned. Stoker clearly portrays the pursuit of Dracula as a battle between the forces of God and Satan, good and evil.

At one point in the novel, the wonderfully eccentric vampire-hunter Van Helsing proclaims: “The Devil may work against us for all he’s worth, but God sends us men when we want them,” and exhorts his comrades that “it is in trouble and trial that our faith is tested” and that “we must keep on trusting, [and] God will aid us up to the end.” Van Helsing not only sees the vampire hunters as “ministers of God’s own wish” representing “the old knights of the cross,” but his prey as the monstrous defamation of God himself.

Literary critics often note the Christian allegory inherent in Dracula, not just in its overtly religious symbolism (crucifix, communion wafer, holy water, and so on), but ultimately in the collision of Christian ethics with Darwinian evolution, a topic that would have been of great interest to its Victorian audience. Either way, in Dracula, religion plays a pivotal role. Not only is Mina saved from the curse, but the vampire is stopped through the faith and hope of “the old knights of the cross.” Good both fights and conquers darkness.

Likewise, horror films often do more than recognize that true evil exists. They show how we are called, like the youthful protagonists in It, to band together and face it. Like “the old knights of the cross” we are called to run into battle, even when that battle brings us face to face with monsters.

Mike Duran is a novelist, blogger, and freelance writer. His book Christian Horror further explores the intersection between the horror genre and a biblical worldview. You can connect with Mike via his website at www.mikeduran.com.