Or a 'scaredy-cat', if you're looking for a more English description. I was brought up with my two younger sisters, in pretty much exactly the same way, yet when it came to horror films (actually, anything including what the film classifiers would call "mild peril"), they could watch and enjoy them without flinching or crying. I, on the other hand, couldn't cope. I even had to be taken from the theatre in tears during a pantomime performance of 'Mother Goose' (and no, that wasn't last week before you ask; I was a child, though I suspect I was older than I'd like to remember).
I just couldn't (and still can't) cope with anything too scary on-screen. You can forget the full-on 'slasher' movies altogether (though I have no idea why people enjoy watching those anyway...how can you enjoy a film in which people are hacked to death? Just...how?) But even in non-scary films it doesn't take much to put me off. It was a nightmare, trying to find films my sisters and I could all watch together as we were growing up (my Dad once innocently brought 'Ghostbusters' home from the video shop for us all to watch together, and lived to regret it).
This hasn't changed as I've got older. I avoid anything "horror-y" completely. Even 'Shaun of the Dead', a comedy zombie film, terrified me. I think it's because I think too much about everything. Because what haunted me the most about 'Shaun of the Dead' wasn't that bit where the zombies start pulling out people's intestines in the pub, it was the fact that one of the first zombies we encountered in the film was a man wearing a wedding suit, complete with carnation. He met a comedically sticky end, but all I could think was "oh my God - but he was going to get married! What about his wife-to-be...and they'll have spent ages planning that...all for nothing"
(I know. I'm actually strange, aren't I?)
I was talking to one of my sisters about my...well, horror, I suppose...of horror films, and she said she felt the same about emotional dramas, not being able to watch them because they could be too intense. And immediately, I started to feel a bit better - that maybe I wasn't so weird after all - because I can "do" emotional dramas. Maybe because a lot of them are designed for over-thinkers like me. A lot of my favourite films get reviews along the lines of "Nothing much happens..." but then when I watch them I can't believe anyone would say that. 'Lost in Translation' is a good example of that kind of film; my husband and I went to see it and he came out saying "It was OK...but it was a bit boring. Nothing much really happened, did it?" But that film is one of my absolute favourites. I've watched it over and over again and I never get tired of it. That film is absolutely full of rich human drama - but most of it unfolds in your own head while you watch. Or at least, if you're like me (read: not quite all there) it is!
'The Boys are Back' is another of my favourite films, but it's also one of the most emotionally raw films I've ever seen. It feels like the mental equivalent of an exposed nerve and I always cry buckets whenever I watch it. I also cry buckets whenever I watch another of my favourite films, 'I've Loved You So Long', though with that one I'm a bit more distracted by the French subtitles and my admiration of how the French don't seem to do "polite stranger small-talk"; they immediately get right down to deep conversations about life and love. Unless that only happens in the films and not real life! I'll never know, not actually being French.
So I suppose I must enjoy all the crying; I guess I must get the same kind of exhilarating feeling from a good old emotional wrangle as someone else does when they watch someone being slashed open with a knife. All horses for courses at the end of the day, right?
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