“Without mystery life would be very dull indeed.  What would be left to strive for if everything was known?”
- Charles de Lint

“Mystery is at the heart of creativity.  That, and surprise.”
- Julia Cameron

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the source of all true art and science.”
- Albert Einstein

The internet has changed how things are done on a grand scale.  It used to be that if you saw a trailer for a film, that would be all you would know about it until it had come out.  Sure, you could go digging through magazines to try to find an article on it, but coverage on horror films was never top priority.  Even in magazines dedicated to horror, there was no guarantee that you’d find anything on that particular film.

These days if you want to know something, it’s only a click away.  We have countless websites to tell you ever little detail from cast and production costs to plot synopses and spoilers.  It’s great that we can now find out what we want about a film with little to no effort, but at what cost?

Over the past couple years, I’ve become somewhat desensitized to the genre.  Overexposure has caused me to just not care.  I would find out about a film, look it up online, watch the trailer, read the plot, and find all the little details I could get my hands on.  I started to believe this was the cause for my sudden apathy towards horror.

I’ve been watching films the past couple months without any previous knowledge of them outside of basic information(at most I may have seen the trailer, other times I just knew the name and nothing else).  This was an experiment of sorts to see if I started to enjoy films more than I have been.  To my surprise, I found myself getting more involved with the plots, liking characters, and all around enjoying horror again.

Now, this could be a case of me just stumbling upon several good films these past few months, but I like to think the “unknown” aspect had something to do with it.  Knowledge is power, but I believe that too much in this case can ruin a perfectly good film.  I will continue to avoid digging for info as best I can and, with any luck, my enjoyment of the films will continue to grow.

I ask you, do you think this is a problem?  Does knowing too much about a film affect your enjoyment of it?  Does it affect your view of other things?