Fear Is Fun?

What is one of form of entertainment that people are fascinated with for seemingly bizarre reasons? It’s something that has been quite popular for over 50 years, and involves vampires, werewolves, and serial killers. While some of details and ideas behind these things have changed, the general form has stayed true to the idea, which is that of the horror movie.

For some reason, people like horror movies. The explanation to why this is true is not so easily seen, nor is it obvious even with closer examination. There are ideas behind why people seem to like them, but none have concrete evidence, and the truth could be a combination of many. One such idea is that people simply like being scared. This could be explained by the adrenaline rush that often occurs after a good scare during a movie. This would explain why people continue to spend money on going to see horror movies, buying them on DVD, and generally throwing money at the franchises.

That is not to say that I don’t like horror movies. The reality is in stark contrast to that statement. What I am searching for is what makes horror movies enjoyable to different audiences. Watching horror movies is one of my favorite things to do. My main reason for liking horror movies is usually to see if the movie that I am watching has new ways of scaring me. This only occurs occasionally, as many new horror movies just have typical jump scares, which are usually less than creative to say the least. However, sometimes horror movies will have incredibly creative or interesting ways of attempting to frighten the viewer that are not usually seen. Sometimes this makes the movie more popular, and sometimes it doesn’t help anything because the movie may not be ‘traditionally scary.” For many more casual viewers of horror films, the story involved in the movie does not matter, and neither does the creativity of the scares. What simply matters is if the movie can give them a “rush,” and make them jump. Something in the basic idea of a horror movie must appeal to people, otherwise they would not be nearly as popular. Even with the quality of popular horror films often not being the best, the films still often make large amounts of money. This idea follows the trend of horror movies being enjoyable to many different kinds of viewers, no matter what the content.

-Ben S.