Courtesy of LAIKA Studios

I still have nightmares of the Other Mother sewing buttons over my eyes.

If you’ve spent any time with me, you’d probably agree that I’m easily scared. Maybe you saw me at my favorite restaurant, Andalé, when a fly barely grazed my arm — I jumped in my seat and shrieked so loudly that I could feel all of the customers staring at me in confusion.  

Flies, spiders, darkness, deep holes, natural disasters — you name it, and I’m probably scared of it. 

So unsurprisingly, horror movies are not my preferred choice of movie to watch. I can barely handle trailers for tense documentaries, much less movies with jumpscares and gory creatures. Nevertheless, I have watched some scary movies throughout my life, and, needless to say, I have had my fair share of trauma.

The first scary media I ever watched (not including that one episode of “Jake and the Neverland Pirates” with the scary robot villain, the “Curious George” Halloween episode or “Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast”) was “Coraline,” at age 6. I managed to get about 30 minutes into the film before I begged my mom to turn it off and let me watch “My Little Pony” instead. 

A couple of years later, I was at my friend’s 9th birthday party and she decided to watch — you guessed it — “Coraline.” In this public setting and unable to lose face, I had to sit through the entire film and watch in horror as the Other Mother tried to sew buttons over Coraline’s eyes. 

In retrospect, I acknowledge that “Coraline” is definitely not the scariest movie ever. But I still refuse to ever watch the nightmare-inducing animation again. I haven’t gotten over this film yet and I don’t think I will anytime soon.

Since “Coraline,” my fears have resurfaced time and time again. In 2022, my friend and I decided to watch “The Batman.”  Sadly, I didn’t bother watching the trailer before going to the theater, a decision I regret to this day.

I naively walked the theater and was met with two hours and 56 minutes of pure torture. I can’t even remember the plot of the film because I trauma-blocked it out of my consciousness. I only remember Robert Pattinson’s extremely emo (and annoying) character, the Riddler’s traumatizing appearance and a never-ending terrifying feeling. 

And earlier this year when I first heard about the movie “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” I immediately knew that I wanted to watch it — not because I’m some dinosaur fanatic, but because the film stars Jonathan Bailey (aka, the best Bridgerton brother). The previous “Jurassic” movies I watched seemed to be montages of Jonathan Bailey fighting dinosaurs in a jungle. The actual movie ended up being more like Jonathan Bailey, his romantic love interest, an annoying villain dude and a random family that somehow got involved in this attempt to survive dinosaurs in a dangerous jungle. 

I know I should have expected this given that the film is part of the classic Jurassic Park franchise, but I was very surprised by how tense and stressful the film was. I am mildly embarrassed to admit that I watched this film with so much fear; I was definitely cowering for parts of it. Meanwhile, my younger brother was completely unbothered.

Some of my friends love watching horror movies — and while it seems fun in theory, I know realistically that I would be constantly screaming at the projector screen. If you do want to watch a horror movie with me, there at least has to be a heartthrob actor — such as Mason Thames in “The Black Phone.” 

In general, I will never be the person to watch horror movies with unless you want to enjoy watching me scream in terror. I think I’ll stick to “Bridgerton,” “Gossip Girl” and “The Babysitters Club.”