Review: "Horror Helps" Finds the Healthy Side of the Horrific

Horror Helps

Written and performed by David Lawson

Presented by Something from Abroad and FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks

94 Saint Marks Pl., Manhattan, NYC

October 17-26, 2024

How and why we watch horror films continues to be the subject of much discussion and analysis using a variety of approaches, from theories of identification and the spectatorial gaze to theories of embodied cognition to, on a larger scale, links to national trauma(s). One common claim, including in science communicator Nina Nesseth's book Nightmare Fuel (Tor Nightfire, 2022), is that horror provides a means to safely explore, confront, and work through various fears, anxieties, and feelings of endangerment. This view of horror is more or less the one adopted by David Lawson's scarily satisfying solo show Horror Helps, which references Nesseth's work in its exploration of the individual particularities of Lawson's love of horror cinema. Horror Helps is part of FRIGID New York's Days of the Dead festival, which runs from October 17th to November 2nd, and, inspired by Día de Muertos, features a range of shows themed around death and the afterlife.

Sporting a fittingly Halloween-themed t-shirt, Lawson opens by highlighting the cathartic possibilities that he finds in watching terrible things happen to other people and explaining the show's division into five sections organized around favorite horror tropes of his. In each section, Lawson interweaves his takes on a trope and examples of its cinematic manifestations with stories of experiences spanning his personal history, from a childhood medical diagnosis (trope: involuntary things happening to the human body) to apartment burglaries (trope: the police are no help) to living through COVID in Queens (trope: pandemics). As is seemingly required in any discussion of horror, in one section, Lawson talks about how he was first drawn into horror as a child, that mixture of fascination and fear that perhaps characterizes most of our encounters with the genre long beyond childhood (and maybe even constitutes an attempt in part to recapture it). As the show spans Lawson's life, it also spans locations from his native Virginia to Boston to his current home, New York City, as well as more than one stint as a tour guide, which is not an inapt analogy for the role that he takes on in Horror Helps.

Lawson (like a lot of horror film) adds to the personal elements of the narrative a good dose of humor and some social commentary (as in both discussing the useless-police trope and addressing his ambivalence about some exceptions to it in films he admires). Lawson exudes an engaging, or should we say, with the pandemic portion of the show in mind, infectious energy as a storyteller, and his knowledge of and affection for the genre is a (Halloween) treat as well. Touching on filmmakers from Roger Corman to Julia Ducournau, the show offers anyone, whether merely horror curious or a seasoned fan, a range of touchstones and points of identification under the umbrella of its central thesis (Lawson's tropes were certainly in our minds as we watched French film MadS (2024) last night, with its pandemic causing involuntary things to happen to bodies). Even veteran horror fans may end up leaving Horror Helps with some viewing recommendations for those days left before Halloween (though any day is a good day for a horror film), but everyone will leave with a jack-o'-lantern-sized smile and maybe a little less fear of fear itself.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards

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