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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Choose horror to escape your quarantine quagmire

Dan Webster

No irony intended, but I typically distrust stories that begin with the pronoun "I."

And, yes, I fully intended to begin this blog post with that very same pronoun before thinking better of it.

Anyway, all self-aggrandizement aside, I was reading a story in Condé Nast Traveler this morning that began like this: "I first noticed the beauty of South Korea's landscape between the second and third zombie attacks."

Now who could resist continuing. The story, written by Caitlin Morton, goes on the list a number of foreign-language horror films that she is using to weather her inability to travel during this COVID-19 quarantine.

She listed the ways in which she had been spending her time, from practicing her guitar to reading to working out and cooking. But then she hit a wall. As she wrote, "(W)hile my aforementioned therapy sessions proved absolutely essential, I ended up turning to a familiar vice to help me get through each day: horror movies. Call me old-fashioned, but sometimes a girl needs to see a few vampire feedings to put things into perspective."

She mentions a number of American standards ("Halloween" and "Friday the 13th") before going on to Korean offerings ("Train to Busan") and one of my favorites, the 2008 original version of "Let the Right One In" (from Sweden).

All are worth checking out. And doing so just might prove therapeutic, as it did for Morton.

"The release they provided me was twofold," she wrote. "The emotionally intense horror gave me an escape from reality, while the foreign setting transported me from my location."

So remember: There is no "I" in travel. But there is in escapism.