Scared Out Of My Wits

Horror movies don't scare me. Neither the stupid ones like "The Evil Dead", nor the more sophisticated ones like "The Omen". Not any of the I-put-jelly-on-my-face-now-I'm-a-monster Ramsay Brothers movies from India. And definitely not the ones like "Saw". "Birds" gets the pulse moving somewhat, as does Urmila's "Kaun" (Hindi). But nothing in a horror movie _really_ scares me.

"Children of Men" - now there's a scary movie. It's about a period where the world hasn't had a childbirth for eighteen years, and because of this, societies have been falling apart all over the world. Britain claims to be "soldiering on", but has its fair share of problems. They show illegal immigrants being gathered together in cages to be eventually sent to concentration camps, where the scenes are disturbingly similar to some from "Schindler's List", impromptu executions included. There are billboards saying "Avoiding a Fertility Test is a Crime", and allusions to the government "handing out suicide kits". There are mobs running amok on the streets with guns like they were sold like cellphones, and the most startling, a mob of Jihadis marching across the streets in a refugee camp weilding machine guns, fighting a battle against a small army of British tanks.

Now that, if you didn't realise, is scary. I'll digress a bit away from the childbirth part. When sights of people being prosecuted and wars being fought on the streets become part of your daily routine, life must be a harrowing experience. Some people have this even today. Many have had it in the past. Makes me wonder what I'd do if I were in the middle of something like this. Makes me wonder what people must have done when they were in these situations. Do you think such situations are less than ideal? There's a word for it - dystopia (an antonym for 'utopia').

Watch the movie if you're in the mood for something unusual.