If you look at Plugged In's home page "rotator" today, you'll notice a big picture of a candle grasped between two fingers. It's a pretty cool picture for what, I hope, you'll think is a pretty decent story—the first of an 8-part series (titled "Not Just a Movie") I've written that explains why we at Plugged In do what we do.

The first part ("Super Story Power") is really (as you might've guessed from the title) about the power of story—why stories resonate so deeply within us, and why the act of storytelling itself is, I think, close to a sacred act. For me, it may be the part of the series that hits closest to where I live.

I was one of those weird little kids who reads all the time. Even when I was in my crib, I needed to be supplied with 11 books (not 10, not 12) to look at before I went to sleep. C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia books, I think, were the first books I ever really loved, and I remember sometimes reading two in a day. (I was out of my crib by this point!) I majored in English in college, and I still find myself with three or four books on my nightstand at any given time. As long as I have a book nearby, I'm a reasonably happy person.

Movies are simply stories told in moving pictures, and as such I have a big appreciation for much of what I see onscreen. I think I can say, fairly, that I love movies, though that might be a little misleading: I don't find every movie all that lovable, and frankly, most have their share of problems—too many to embrace without reservations.

But all that's there in my story. And as you read it, this week and in the coming weeks as it arrives online in installments, I'd love to hear what you think.

My review of 9, the Tim Burton-produced animated apocalypse, is now up on the main Plugged In site. The film is more haunting parable than anything else, bolstered by an important cautionary question: With all our techno-gizmos and mechanized whodats, are we getting too smart for our own good?

I talk pretty extensively about the spiritual elements in my review(and there are many). But here, I'd like to address something else that I've been puzzling over: The film's creep factor, and why it impacted me as it did.

I saw 9 on the heels of Halloween II, a gory, violent, hard-R horror movie. It was a feature-length study in brutality, where humanity is bludgeoned to the point of unrecognizability--a vicious and loathesome way to spend two hours. But here's the thing: Bloody horror films like Halloween don't scare me. I didn't jump. I didn't scream. The movie--has horrible as it was--didn't linger. I am frightened of a great many things, but Michael Myers is not among them.

But the evil, soulless machines in 9 ... man, those are just flat-out creepy. If I was 12 and had seen the film, I'm pretty sure the snake-like machine topped by an eyeless doll head would've given me nightmares for weeks. And let me make a confession: 9, at one point, made me jump.

None of this is to say that Halloween II is somehow more benign than 9: It's not. But it is interesting ... and it perhaps illustrates that blood and guts aren't nearly as frightening as imagery that taps, somehow, into our Boschian-like imaginations. Ask the man-or-woman on the street about the creepiest films they've seen, and chances are good that, somewhere in the conversation, The Wizard of Oz will pop up because of those scary flying monkeys.

So, all that said, tell me: What movies scare you? And why?