Aanshi Shah Week #9 - Horror Movies


Horror movies are an undeniable hallmark of our society. Although I don’t really like watching horror movies anymore, I used to be a huge fan of them. I remember how my friends and I would huddle on the couch during our sleepovers and watch movies like “The Ring” or “The Conjuring”. We definitely aren’t the type of people who are immune to horror movies. Afterwards, we would be so petrified that we always had to send our bravest friend to go turn the lights on. Once, my friend’s dad came in to get a glass of water, and we all screamed at the sound of his footsteps. When we were younger, we were so scared that some of us even started crying. But, no matter how miserable or paranoid watching those movies made us, we all enjoyed horror movies so much that they became a sleepover tradition. 

The whole concept of horror movies seems counterintuitive. Usually, we watch movies to relax, or to be sucked into an amazing story. Instead, horror movies have one sole purpose: to terrify us. In most people, they cause paranoia, nightmares, and can even worsen overall mental health. So why are horror movies so powerful?

The answer to that is quite simple. According to Dazed, a movie page, horror movies provide a controlled environment to experience and express intense emotion. Even if the movie scares us, our brains always have the knowledge that we are not truly in danger. Because of this, the adrenaline rush we get from a jump scare or a fight scene registers as excitement in our mind. Though it feels like fear, our brain also releases positive chemicals when we’re scared by something easily controllable, like a movie. Another part of it is the relief we get when the adrenaline rush fades, which activates the brain’s reward system and transforms the whole experience into a cathartic release of emotion. 

Personally, I stopped watching, or even reading, horror because I got bad nightmares, but knowing exactly why watching horror movies created a lot of my favorite memories provides a lot of insight on the bonds I made with my friends, since we had a lot of sleepovers, and have watched a lot of horror movies. Even if this isn’t too helpful, I hope this was an interesting read, and if you haven’t watched any horror, I think you should, just for the experience. 


https://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/64898/1/why-is-horror-so-popular-right-now-the-substance-genre#:~:text=%E2%80%9CHorror%20activates%20the%20fight%2Dor,feel%20like%20a%20cathartic%20release. 





THE RING: Still Horrifying 20 Years Later - Daily Dead

Comments

  1. Raymond Holmes-KingJanuary 22, 2025 at 8:25 PM

    Hi Aanshi. I love the fact that you wrote about horror movies. I love horror movies because I like to come up with ways I would survive the horror movie. I, just like you, used to get nightmares after watching horror movies. When I was younger, maybe around 6, I watched a zombie movie and got scared for live. Since I did not know that the movie was fake, I was scared for my life whenever I was alone at my house. There is a Brightside to being scared almost to death, you think of ways that you can survive in different horror scene. I fully agree that horror movies hold great power, the power to scare us, and making us want to keep watching at the same time.

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