You voluntarily turn on a movie you already know is going to scare you and freak you out. 20 minutes later, you’re covering your eyes, jumping at every small noise, and asking yourself, “Why am I watching this?” Then, somehow, when the credits roll, you immediately text your friends: You’ve GOT to watch this. How does that make sense?
There’s something deeply confusing about our relationship with disturbing movies. We willingly spend two hours watching people make terrible decisions, witnessing increasingly unsettling situations, and wondering whether we should just turn the movie off, but we keep watching. Oftentimes, the more uncomfortable a movie makes us, the more determined we are to finish it.
Being Disturbed by Movies
Part of the appeal of it all is that watching something frightening from the comfort of your own home is very different from actually experiencing something frightening. You’re fully aware of where you are; you’re conscious of your free will to turn the movie off or walk out of the room. You can turn on every light in your apartment (not the big lights, though). You can watch Rick and Morty afterward to cleanse your mind.
If you’re watching with friends, you can spend most of the time making fun of the characters’ idiotic decisions. Basically, you experience all the excitement of being scared and unsettled without any of the actual danger.
There’s also a feeling of security that comes with knowing that you’re actively choosing the experience for yourself. You can decide when to press play, when to look away, and when you’ve simply had enough. You’re beautifully exercising free will.
Of course, most of us rarely decide to actually turn it off. Instead, we reach the exact moment when the movie becomes really disturbing and think, “Okay, I probably shouldn’t watch this,” but we continue watching anyway.
That’s where the puzzle piece falls into place: morbid curiosity. Sometimes, we aren’t even completely enjoying what we’re watching. We just desperately want to know what is going to happen next.
A disturbing movie can turn into a sort of challenge. How’s this going to end? What’s actually happening? Is the main character going to figure it out? What’s the twist? How much worse can this possibly get? Suddenly, “I hate this” becomes “I need to know.”
It’s essentially as if the movie has trapped you. Not because of the enjoyment of being uncomfortable, but because of the sheer need to know what’s next. This is particularly true with psychological thrillers and movies that leave you questioning what you just watched.
A Movie’s Aftermath
Sometimes, the best part isn’t even the movie itself. It’s the conversation that ensues. You finish the movie and immediately start dissecting it with your friends. A movie that made you uncomfortable for two hours has given you something to talk about for the next three days.
That’s exactly how the movie Obsession made me feel. I swear my friends heard about my deeply rooted discomfort from that movie for about a week straight. Honestly, I think that’s part of why disturbing movies can be so much more memorable than movies that are casually enjoyable. A cute rom-com might make you smile for two hours, or a fun action movie might keep you entertained for a bit, but a truly disturbing movie can crawl inside your brain and refuse to leave.
You start thinking about it while brushing your teeth. You explain the plot to someone who didn’t even ask. You watch endless TikToks analyzing the different scenes and what the ending could mean. You tell your friends they need to watch it even though you spent half the movie saying, “This is horribly disturbing.”
The Experience of a Scary Movie
There’s a special kind of satisfaction that comes from being challenged by a movie. Maybe it comes from trying to figure out the twist. Maybe it’s in trying to figure out why a character made the choices they did, or maybe we’re just testing how much we can handle.
I find a difference between being disturbed and being bored. If a movie makes me uncomfortable but gives me something to think about afterward, I’m much more likely to remember it. Sometimes, I don’t even know if I genuinely liked the movie. I just know that I have something to say about it, and isn’t that what makes a good movie? It is not necessarily whether you would watch it again, but whether it gives you something to say afterward.
There’s also something weirdly fun about watching disturbing movies with other people. Watching alone means every creepy and unsettling noise belongs to you. Watching with friends means you get to watch their reactions, too. Someone screams, someone laughs. Someone says, “Absolutely not,” while leaning closer to the screen. Someone inevitably says, “If that were me, I would simply leave,” and, obviously, they actually wouldn’t.
This shared experience makes something scary feel a little less scary. We can all be horrified together! Maybe that’s why our relationship with disturbing movies isn’t as contradictory as it seems. Maybe we don’t love being disturbed; we just love being in control of when we’re disturbed.
We choose the movie. We choose when to watch it, pause it, or turn it off. We can experience fear, discomfort, and curiosity without actually putting ourselves in danger. When it’s over, we get to do the best part: talk about it.
The next time you spend two hours insisting that you hate a movie only to recommend it to everyone you know, don’t worry. You probably aren’t some secret masochist who enjoys suffering. You just happen to be curious and equipped with the perfect tools (streaming platforms), and honestly? Same.
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