A Look In a Mirrors

I just got back from watching the Mirrors movie. As always, I learned something new about me. Or more accurately, I confirmed something I had suspected about myself. It's all about the innocent.

As I watched the movie, I jumped at all the right places, cringed at all the appropriate gory parts. I even got a little misty at the more touching parts. Through it all, I felt this overtone of tension and fear that any Suspense/Thriller/Horror movie is supposed to evoke. That is until a child was injured. Then there was nothing but rage.

As I watch movies I tend to really put myself in the protagonists' positions. "What would I do if it were me?" It really makes for an intense movie experience. Throughout Mirrors, there was quite a bit that I would not have done that the protagonists did, but as I projected myself into their situations, there was that overtone of fear that I mentioned earlier. And when the child was injured, all fear evaporated. There was only rage--the deadly, intense, focused determination to destroy--to annihilate--any and all things related to that which harmed the child. Mugger, psycho, demon, devil...all will quail and fall in the chaotic glow of my righteous, indignant wrath. Can't kill a demon? Watch me. Impossible to slay a devil? Tell that to its screaming, writhing, sulfurous body just before it's thrust back into the bowels of Hell.

I know, I know. It's only a movie. But hey, you can still learn something real about yourself, even if the teacher is a fantasy. Lesson: my paternal instinct is way out of control. And it's not something I'm likely to change. Because I don't want to. Because I'm right.