Michael VS Jason--Reality VS Real Horror

See, here's the thing. Michael Myers? Is he scary? Sure! No one would deny that a silent dude in a mask turning every person who crosses him into a bleeding knife block would be scary. Add in that Carpenter soundtrack, damned good cinematography, and an immortal performance by the great Donald Pleasance, and you've got an unimpeachable horror classic. BUT, the thing about Michael Myers is that you have to be TAUGHT to be scared of him. What's one of the first things kids get taught once they're old enough to walk and talk back? "Don't talk to strangers." At the end of the day, that's what Mikey is; a stranger. A person who may look funny, but the average kid wouldn't really understand what to be afraid of until a parent or some other adult teaches or shows them WHY they should be afraid of a quiet man in a bad William Shatner mask.

Myers hangs around in one of the most common, ordinary settings in American culture: an everyday suburb. He doesn't lurk in sewers or dark alleyways, he doesn't arise from the pits of hell due to some incomprehensible puzzle cube, he chills and puts the big chill on people, in some cul de sac across the street from the church bake sale. A kid isn't scared of that right off the bat because it's a normal setting; there's no instinct to be afraid there. The people who really are scared of Michael Myers? Parents. All that accumulated life experience, all that sense of normalcy and understanding of life, and the moment you see ANYTHING that threatens that, you're terrified. When you're a kid, you're afraid of Vampires, Werewolves, and weird shit bursting out of your television screen to kill you. When you're an adult with a mortgage and a family, the idea of your normal life being altered by the serial killer next door is terrifying. Myers is the monster you're afraid of when you have something to lose.

Now Jason Voorhees? EVERY kid is scared of Jason Voorhees. He's something different; he's the other; the boogieman, the slenderman, and every other mysterious, weird and dangerous thing that lurks at the edge of reality and beyond. From the get-go, Jason is immediately associated with two things other than his hockey mask and machete: The deep dark woods, and the fear of water. Jason is integrally tied to two things humans are instinctually afraid of: the unknown darkness, and fear of drowning in water or worse. A child doesn't need to be taught much of anything to know to be afraid of that, because it's the darkest and most mysterious things that a person with little experience of life can fear. You're afraid of that unknown thing, and it sticks with you all your life. You try to fight it back with reason, science, and a million other things, but at the back of your mind, and in the depths of your soul, you know you're still afraid of it. A kid is more honest about things like that, and when faced with a creature from that kind of environment that is every bit as mysterious and dangerous as they think those are, you can bet your last dollar that Mama

Voorhees' baby boy was responsible for wetting more than his fair share of Huggies.

Now to be fair, both killers are cruel, violent and monstrous; there's no doubt of that. But the thing that makes Jason so terrifying compared to Michael to the average kid is the fact that Jason is driven by something far more incomprehensible: indiscriminate hate. Mister Myers, for all of his murderous escapades, is like a heat-seeking missile - he just wants to kill off every single member of his family. Any other victims are just collateral damage; much of soon to be morgue tenants who were unlucky enough to get in the way. Jason? He's an unkillable zombie-thing that destroys all life in his presence. Death itself in a ratty old army jacket. A kid understands to be afraid of the most obvious and dangerous threat by instinct. Adults understand to be afraid of the thing that takes from you, kids know to be afraid of the thing that can take EVERYTHING from you in a split second. Kids may not know much, but damn if they're not smarter than adults when it counts.