Horror movies can be a powerful way to handle anxiety
By: Kelly Tompkins
Tags: Mental Health, Horror, Movies, Life, Anxiety

Using controlled fear to overcome your own.

Photo by Jose Francisco Morales on Unsplash

Do you have to be fucked up to like horror movies?

That was my original headline for this article. Not very catchy and a little abrasive, right? But it was a question I ask myself every time I meet someone who doesn’t like horror. When I talk to people about horror in general, the common answer is that I’m crazy for liking it. Or, it’s too scary for them to watch or play if it’s a game.

It seemed like people who had a pretty good handle on life were the ones who didn’t like horror so I started to look into it more. I had a ton of hypotheses.

Was it dealing with trauma at a young age? When I looked into this one, it was because it made the most sense to me. That if you’ve dealt with something horrific in the past, horror movies would be nothing to you. I’ve even told my boyfriend before that horror movies aren’t scary because I’ve seen worse. But, looking into it further, that wasn’t a common theme among people who like scary movies. Sure, it was there but it didn’t seem to explain it in the best way.

I do think that if you’ve experienced some form of trauma in your life, it does shape the wiring of your brain. But this could go in different directions and doesn’t always mean you’ll handle stress well.

Are they just thrill seekers? This one also caught a small group of people as well, mainly men when I looked into it. It was a chance for men to show bravery in a controlled environment to a woman they were interested in. On the flip side, the woman would see how brave the man was being and see him as more dependable, someone they could trust. In everything I read, there was a gender divide in that more men than women liked scary movies. But, there was no data behind that besides a survey. I didn’t see anywhere that we actually studied the body’s response to horror movies to see if that gender divide was real. If there is, I definitely want to know the source. Mainly because hey, I’m a woman who loves horror while my male boyfriend is absolutely terrified of them.

If the person deals with anxiety or depression, they might be into scary movies. Is that the determining factor? For me, in every fluff piece and researched article on the internet would point to this and I believe a lot of what they were writing about.

The benefits of horror

In this article specifically, the writer talks about the benefits of horror movies. These were things I knew instinctively but never really thought about. I just liked horror.

Horror has been around for as long as we humans have. In the form of ghost stories, urban legends, and other stories that were meant to prepare us for the unknown.

But horror, in any medium, can be a form of therapy. In the above referenced article, he talks about there being “good stress”. This is saying that people who have anxiety might be able to use horror as a way to distract themselves from the stress they feel every day. Giving yourself little doses of controlled stress might also build up your tolerance, similar to your immunity. There is also a form of behavior therapy called “Exposure Therapy” that is used to help people address their phobias among other conditions that cause stress and fear.

While this usually means addressing your fear of heights by either imagining a high altitude or physically being a tall place, horror can be more controlled.

Horror always follows the rules

Even though it seems chaotic, the horror genre has rules. There is a reason why there are so many parody movies about them like Scary Movie which parodies everything from Scream to The Sixth Sense.

The movie Scream talks abundantly about it and so does the movie Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Just a few obvious ones on how to survive a horror movie and other tropes:

Never split up or call out to an assumed empty room — Even in Cabin in the woods, they make fun of the ridiculousness of splitting up for survival. You also should never call out “Hello” or anything like that in a room once you’ve heard a noise. Don’t do drugs or have sex — If you’re a character in a horror movie, this is the best way to get yourself killed. Just implies that you’re altered and therefore not able to successfully evade the villain. Always look behind you — Self explanatory but if you don’t know where the killer is, he’s always right behind you. Don’t depend on your cell phone or car — There’s never reception and your car never works when you need it(or it’s been tampered with by the killer) There’s always a final girl-This is manly in slashers but it’s a virtuous girl who survives the carnage while everyone else dies.

Now how does that help you handle anxiety?

Horror has rules and because of that, can be predictable. The villain, even if there’s a sequel, was not victorious in the end of the movie. So while it seems like you’re watching a movie that only has gore and jumpscares, the protagonist gets out alive so it’s almost always a happy ending. They can be seen walking towards a sunrise at the end, having made it out alive.

I sometimes imagine what it will be like when I’m at my worst in depression, that I will get my sunrise that I will walk towards in the end. Having that imagery helps because it creates a separation between two phases, the normalcy of your life vs the rock bottom of your depression.

Because it’s a controlled environment, it can be a healthy way to approach how you handle stress and fear. When you watch a scary movie or play a scary game, you’re able to turn it off whenever you want. You control how hard the game is and you choose where and when you move. I’ve seen that when I’m playing horror games consistently, I’m less afraid of them. If I don’t play consistently, I notice that I’m more afraid, more anxious of what’s ahead.

Addressing your fear head on

This is because your mind isn’t able to form a pattern. It doesn’t know what’s coming up and your body’s natural reaction to the unknown is to avoid it. We were conditioned at the start to avoid the things that make us afraid as they might be the one thing that kills us.

But once you realize that horror movies and even games have a pattern, you have control over what happens and how you react. In a world full of unknowns, this is the time that you see what’s in front of you and you can react to it with that knowledge behind you.

In the game, Fatal Frame, your only weapon is a camera with special film in it that you exorcise ghosts with. And when you take pictures of the spirits, the closer they get and the longer you hold them in frame, the more damage you do. This type of interaction teaches you to control your fear because your natural instinct when afraid is to run or fight, and the fight is something of a knee jerk reaction. If you choose to take pictures in the game quickly and run, you do less damage and have to face your fear longer. But if you choose to face the fear head on and time the shot, you do a lot more damage and ‘win’ faster. It’s a direct relation between seeing your fear, and overcoming it.

If you truly hate horror and everything about it, that’s okay. I know some people don’t like being afraid and that fear is spread across everything in their lives. They might not even like thrills like roller coasters or things like that. But if you can handle horror in small doses, it’s something that can be a great way to expose yourself to the things that you fear without directly exposing yourself to them.