Ever reach out  to touch the person next to you during a horror flick? Ever reached out for a complete stranger? I have. It’s a funny feeling. That need to assert reality and connect with someone else during those moments we’re most uneasy is so natural that sooner or later all of us end up with that little embarrassed smile. It’s a reasonably good segue into some thoughts on the nature of cultural community.

Just got the new Patient Zero lifesize zombie bust from Sideshow. Wow! Single best life-size zombie anything I’ve ever seen. Brought to mind a couple of things though. Staring at the gaping maw and the dead white eyes and the decayed flesh reminded me that a) nobody gets to take their toys with them when they shuffle off this mortal coil and b) all those toys eventually pass into the dust of history themselves.

Horror is a religion or at the very least, a spiritual pathway. No greater proof of that (in the inverse) currently exists than the remake of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, whose marketing has been marked most obviously by a campaign to make sure the film is released unrated in as many theaters as possible. The idea seems to be that if horror fans really love the “cutting edge” they’ll demand to see it this way. Sadly the truth is, the marketers do have a point. A rated, and thus necessarily truncated version of this film would be pointless not because it would violate the aesthetic of a complex work of art but because it would then fail to deliver the only thing I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (2010) has to offer.

A recent back-to-back (and, I’m told, one-time-only) theatrical screening of [REC] and [REC] 2 was a real treat. I had loved [REC] and missed an opportunity to see the sequel earlier in the year. I wasn’t disappointed. [REC] 2 was even more compelling, carrying the fright over from the first film along with the very interesting blend of religious images and a portrait of the human community in crisis, and thus reinforced something that’s been at the spiritual core of so much of the really good recent horror cinema.

Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love a Child Molester

Reading the bile that many of my fellow critics and fans have heaped on the new NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET has led me to some reasonably deep soul-searching on the issue of what it means to be a critic, or at least the kind of critic I have become. Not much of an issue in a sea of bloggers and self-pronounced pundits, but perhaps a worthy endeavor for a man who would like to consider himself spiritual.

TheoFantastique is one of the friendliest places on the Internet to discuss spirituality and the possibility of transcendent experiences with science fiction, fantasy and horror in pop culture. Run by John Morehead, the wide-ranging blog is quickly becoming a go-to place for theorists, commentators and authors as well as a solid, fun read for fans who want to think more deeply about their own spiritual journey.

Welcome to hell. It’s as good a place as any to start talking horror and spirituality. I’m sure our ongoing conversation will take us to other places as well, but hell…hell is a place that burns up BS. That seems like a good starting point to me.