I don’t get all my philosophy from movies, but when I do - yeah. I have a soft spot for kung-fu flicks, spaghetti westerns, and horror movies. What can I say?

It’s October, which means besides listening to the Misfits and drinking apple cider, I’m also trying to convince my wife to watch some horror movies (which is normally not her thing, for all the good reasons).

You probably shouldn’t choose anxiety and fear and stress. But, there’s an industry for it, so why self-examine why I like these things?

It’s better to remember back in middle school and high school, how me and a group of friends would rent a stack of horror movies from Blockbuster or whatever regional chain, and I still wonder if anybody ever asked or noted the age ratings in those ages, but also, thank god they didn’t.

We watched them together and it was just so much fun. Sure, sometimes you get scared and other times you get an absolute dud, but we’d laugh, and get into deep conversations, and joke about how if we ever met Brad Pitt we’d say, “Hey, aren’t you the guy from Cutting Class?!” It served multiple purposes. It also left a lot of holes in things I’ve seen and haven’t because - regional VHS rentals in the ‘90s?

So my wife will partake, for the month of October, so long as we don’t watch Sleepaway Camp first, which she’d still prefer if we not talk about the ending again, even though when people start to talk about it she has lots of thoughts and takes. It’s fantastic.

One of our first movies this season was Pumpkinhead. My memory of seeing it the first time is of us laughing/complaining that nobody actually has a pumpkin for a head. It’s less a corny movie and more of an OG supernatural thriller.

If you want to see it I’m about to spoil it, but only at the top level because it came out in 1988 and - stick with me or here’s where you can drop out.

The core idea of the movie is that if you ask the creepy old witch lady for help with avenging your murdered son, you better be prepared for what you’re asking for (and, you are not).

It’s a cautionary tale, really. For all the heartache and tragedy of losing a loved one, to avenge the death with more death is, at least in a purely Christian sense, to sin again.

The brutal reality of an eye for an eye is just that - a brutal reality.

In the movie we watch the dad, first tortured by his loss, and then tortured by how he has to witness the vengeance taking place, in all its gory details, and it forces him to accept this is not at all what he wanted.

The dad and the demon he plays a role in conjuring are one and the same. Separate, but entangled. The movie explores it very well, and how the desire and the demon are two different things. The dad isn’t the villain, even if he temporarily becomes it, because - he pays the price for salvation once he realizes he’s sinned.

We’re watching this movie and I’m thinking about the value set it espouses. It doesn’t critique having the value of vengeance, and it even goes so far as to tee up how the main character even knows the old witch lady is an option for this sort of thing, as sort of a communally understood lesson.

But, it’s a cautionary tale. We can relate to the dad. We can relate to a lot of the characters. We can also wonder if we’d have the guts to do what he did to shut down a mistake part way through. The movie raises bigger philosophical questions than its campy vibes give off.

So, we watched the movie about a week ago, and - real life is still here, you know?

Between the Tennessee botched execution and now whatever this firing squad livestream is supposed to be, the movie’s message hit a little different this time through.

I’m not smart (and certainly not powerful) enough to set policy or even understand the legality of those events, but I do know death is as serious as it gets, so people who don’t seem to spend much time thinking about the seriousness of it concern me.

I understand the want just like I relate to the father in the movie after the murder. I also understand the visceral repulsion from carrying out what he wants the demonic mechanism to carry out, only to find out he has to experience it first hand. I feel that in the headlines right now, too.

There’s a reason not everyone likes horror movies. Death is scary. Death makes (most of us) feel a little sick. Especially to watch. Especially when it’s not us because we know someday it will be us and we could all use a little mercy in that moment.

So who is the audience for a real life broadcast? I know we can turn on the news any day of the week. I’ve seen what shows up on the social media feed, too, and I’m - I already told you a 90s VHS kid, so Faces of Death and all that, I get it.

Who’s the audience, who’s the performer, and why is each of them there? That’s what I’m asking. I think it’s important, for movies and real life, to ask these questions.

Because it’s good to be reminded of death. It’s good to be reminded of murder and punishment and what jobs we are willing to do, that we want others to do, and then most of all to ask…

Why?

I worry about the people who want to celebrate the real thing and not the reminders of why we’re all trying to avoid it for as long as we can. The Pumpkinheads are out right now. I can’t tell you what justice looks like from the top down, but I can tell you that from my perspective, I’d rather be somebody who flinches than somebody who cheers.