Oftentimes it seems that with horror movies you either love them or you hate them. Personally, I have grown up watching them so I love them, but there are a lot of people out there who hate watching anything scary. Why is there such a divide in this genre? Why do we want to see horrible things happen?
First, we can look at the psychology behind horror. According to Psychology Today, the author writes, “Presumably, we evolved to find pleasure in threat simulation because of the learning potential of such simulation. When we play with fear, we may learn important lessons about the dangers of the world as well as our own responses to danger. We learn what it feels like to be afraid, and we get to practice and hone fear-regulation strategies. We may even become more resilient in the process.” (On the Psychology of Horror Movies | Psychology Today)
So, we enjoy going through the motions of being scared without being in any real physical danger. We can experience the things that scare us and see what it is like to “survive” them. I believe this is true. In addition to seeing the human side of horror movies, it’s fun to also just be scared. It is a sort of unexplainable feeling. It doesn’t make sense that we would enjoy being scared, but a lot of people do. This psychological definition makes sense, but I think there is more to it than that.
For a long time when I was younger, I didn’t find that joy in watching scary movies. Instead, I was left imagining the monster in my dark bedroom or under my bed. But I think there came a point where I started to feel that joy in getting scared. It’s fun to get jump-scared and root for the characters on screen. I think this change probably happened for me when I watched It (2017). There is no doubt that It is a scary movie, but I found myself enjoying the themes of friendship and found family much more than the scariness of the movie. There is emphasis on building up these characters and their backgrounds which gives the viewer a connection to the characters. We want to see them make it out alive and are saddened when they don’t. After It, I started to see the appeal to horror movies: humanity in comparison to the supernatural. I like watching horror movies and dissecting what they are really about. It’s just like any other movie, but the stakes are much higher because there is some monster or demon hunting our main character.
The horror genre has definitely developed since the campy movies of the 80s into the “elevated” horror of today that focuses more on the human experience and creating truly horrifying scenarios. Movies like Hereditary, Midsommar, Get Out, Talk to Me and more focus on some pretty serious topics like death, racism, and trauma. These topics can be explored through the supernatural to better understand what they mean to us as humans.
Or there could be no true reason and we just happen to enjoy watching scary stuff for fun. Who knows. I think I’ll watch a scary movie tonight and maybe you should too!
