Meet The Horror Bloggers: The Death Rattle

Horror writers are a curious and fascinating lot. Through fiction and research alike they cast a wonderful tapestry of words that continually entertain, fascinate, and provoke us. With a mixture of knowledge, passion, and wit they help remind us why horror continues to enthrall people of all creeds. In this ongoing feature, we bring these dedicated fans into the limelight to discuss the things that go bump in the night. And their desire to bump those things back.

Aaron, the main hombre over at The Death Rattle, let's us into the early video-rental days of his cinematic passion and how it fuels his current love for horror and non-genre flicks alike...

I like to write about films from various genres over at The Death Rattle. In general I don't necessarily consider myself a horror blogger, but horror is without a doubt my first love when it comes to films. My interest in horror wasn't something that happened overnight. I didn't see a particular movie that blew my mind and made me fall in love with the genre. Thanks to parents who never really monitored what I watched, combined with the fact that I was more or less raised by the television, I started watching horror movies at an age when I was too young to even realize what a horror movie was; I didn't really have a choice but to grow to love them. Jason Voorhees was as much a childhood hero to me as Luke Skywalker and Hulk Hogan, brother. My earliest memories of the genre are watching the first three Friday the 13th films repeatedly (the third was my favorite), being terrified of Mausoleum and The Howling, and laughing hysterically at Evil Dead II.

A few years ago I had a part-time job at a video store on top of having a full-time job. I didn't need the money, but the idea of getting paid to be around movies for a few hours a day sounded excellent. It was then that I started my first blog. I had access to all of these movies, and in some cases before they were released to the public, so I wanted a platform to talk about them. At first I started writing reviews on Amazon because I knew there was already a built-in audience and community there, but some of the reviews I wrote never got published for whatever reason.

Frustrated, I started a legit blog that was dedicated to horror movies, which went unread for many months until I finally figured out how to search for other horror blogs and follow them. I was amazed to discover, for once, a community of people who weren't jaded, elitist pricks, who wrote about horror movies because they genuinely loved doing it. Since then, I've made a lot of amazing likeminded friends through my blog. What a crazy thing, this internet.

The only reason I don't dedicate my time to writing strictly about horror mvoies anymore is because there are so many other great films out there from other genres that I enjoy sharing and writing about, and quite frankly it's not often these days that I come across a new horror film that interests me. There are a few North American directors out there, like James Wan, Lucky McKee, John Knautz, and Ti West, who make me hopeful of a bright future for the genre, but there hasn't been a truly original horror filmmaker to come along and shake things up in a long time.

At this point, my goal with The Death Rattle is to simply keep whoever reads it interested. The fact that I put care and work into my site doesn't mean I have delusional aspirations of getting fancy quotes on the DVD cover for some movie I don't care about. If the opportunity to get some perks out of this presents itself, I'd be an idiot to turn them down, but to me it's never been about that. I'm just some dude who likes watching movies and writing about them. Aside from my friends and loyal readers, I don't pander to anyone. As long as people keep reading, I'll be more than happy to keep writing.