The Killer Inside

Everyone gets angry. And I'm not just talking about cross enough to say a few naughty words and stomp up the stairs.

I'm taking rage. Full on, ripping doors off fury. The kind of anger that makes your stare powerful enough to melt through steel.

Know what I mean? Of course you do.

This anger can boil up from anything. Usually though, when it really lets fly, there's a build up. A gradual drip-drip-drip to something that you hold back, keep at bay, until suddenly - BOOM...

The repercussions can be terrifying, not just for you, but those around you. And if you're on your own? The doors get it. The chairs. Things get thrown. You yell and scream and ...

I've always found the horror genre utterly unafraid of dealing with anger. You get an action movie or a thriller, quite often the anger leads to something good happening, where the hero's loss of control causes the downfall of the bad guy and in the end, all things are good. And we're left thinking, hey that anger? That was worth it. That was necessary. And it felt gooooood. We find ourselves justifying the anger because of the good outcome, the hero saving the day.

It ain't always like that.

Anger and fury do not generally lead to good things happening. We get hurt, mentally and physically. Bad things happen. Really bad things. And if a story doesn't shy away from that, then I reckon it's all the more powerful.

Good things happen to bad people. Bad things happen to good people. Sometimes, evil wins, because that's just the way things turn out.

So next time you're watching or reading something where the hero gets angry and it all turns out right in the end, look back to the moment anger turned into something righteous. And flip it. Take it in another direction.

Explore the darker side of who and what we are.

That way we can learn from it.