Senior Amelia Pointer hyperventilated because of a Bill Nye The Science Guy video in the second grade. 

Ever since she was very little, Amelia’s dad instilled a strong passion for films in her. This wasn’t an issue until Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom became a bit too much to handle for her young heart. 

“He showed us the movie Indiana Jones two when I was in second grade,” Amelia said, “and there’s this part where this man rips another man’s heart out with his bare hands, and it freaked me out so bad that when I was in health class the next day we were watching a Bill Nye science video about hearts and anatomy, and I started sobbing and hyperventilating because I had just watched a man get his heart ripped out with my dad.”

Although this was quite a lot to handle for second grade Amelia, she has grown immensely since then—and now would not even flinch at the sight of something as gruesome as a man getting his heart torn out—because horror is her preferred genre to watch. 

Anything so disturbing and or terrifying that will put her normally at ease mind on edge is worth a watch if it lets Amelia escape real life. 

“It takes so much to get a reaction out of me,” Amelia said, “because I am a pretty passive person, very go with the flow, and a lot of the time I feel like I am just existing in everyday life. But if I am watching a horror film, and it really freaks me out and gets my adrenaline pumping—I like that. I like being scared. I think it’s fun, but it doesn’t happen very often.”

She believes it takes a certain type of person to be able to not only watch but also respect the effort that goes into making these disturbing films. 

Unfortunately for Amelia, her parents do not share the same addiction to terror that she does, despite being the ones who introduced her to it in the first place.

“My mom absolutely despises horror movies,” Amelia said. “Any small jump scare—she will absolutely lose her mind, and my dad is kind of okay with them, but they get way too in their head about it. I am the type of person that can watch something super disturbing and then go to bed without even batting an eye.”

This means Amelia opts to watch most movies by herself these days—aside from the occasional family movie night. 

However, it has never bothered her, because watching films is her own comfort. She indulges in them any time life gets a little too overwhelming.

“[Watching films] is something that I have always done,” Amelia said. “I used to go to family video to spend all my allowance and then stay up all night watching them. So now that everything is different, and everything is horrible, and our senior year is wrecked, you have to hold on to what is comfortable and familiar, and I do get that source of joy when I watch movies.”

Given the hardships we have all faced this year, she is incredibly grateful to have such an easily accessible escape and one she is not afraid to turn to often. She watches about three to four movies weekly and loves every second of it.

Amelia knows there is nothing simple about real life, but at least in films, everything happens for a reason.

“It’s a good thing when you’re able to enjoy something so simple,” Amelia said. “If your favorite thing was skydiving, you don’t get to do that whenever you want, but for my favorite thing, I just get to sit down and watch a movie to feel calm. I find comfort knowing that happy feeling will be with me for the rest of my life.”