What Is Scary About Horror Movies?
By: Nika Nikolic
Tags: Movies, Imagination, Feelings, Film, Horror

Induced emotions

The best movies make you feel things. That’s why you watch them. Sure they could be educational, analytically exciting, or an excellent study material if you are a student of the movie industry or a writer looking for tips on how great stories are being told. But you cannot avoid feeling things when watching a good movie.

Romantic movies make people feel all lovie-dovie with butterflies in the stomach. Or just sick to their ears if they don’t like the genre.

Tragedies make people sad, comedies make people laugh… because they find a way to tell universal stories in a way that most people can connect to them. They create characters strong enough that viewers find them relatable, likable, or just easy to hate.

Through these characters, we take their stories for our own. That’s when we feel what they are trying to make us feel. And we love every minute of it.

Throughout history, this inducing of feelings was intentionally cathartic. Ancient Greeks were combining two plays at the time. First was a tragedy. Someone died. People cried. But right afterward, you could, and was even meant for you to stay and watch the second show. Which was a comedy. So you could laugh your ass out and relaxed.

It was a recipe for emotional relaxation.

Today movies are mostly considered to be a part of entertainment. But a lot of people still enjoy a good cry when watching a tragedy. It’s an emotional shock that makes us feel strongly. But without any real consequences to our lives that we should deal with. So it’s safe.

Imagination and belief

What makes emotions induced by moving pictures on a screen is the ability of the story to draw us into its loins. The more powerful the story, the better the actors, and all the rest that makes a great movie makes us forget about our reality.

We start believing in the reality that is displayed to us. That is the moment when our imagination gets so activated (the same, or even more powerful is with the books or other good art) that the line between what we know is real (our life) and the imaginary story (which belongs to the whole different “universe”, even if it is about actual events or people).

Because of the strength of the imagination, the story becomes our reality. That’s why we feel as a character feels.

With horror movies, that feeling is fear.

A totally calm viewer wouldn’t get scared. I actually knew a guy once (I believe there are some more people like that, but probably not a whole bunch) who didn’t get scared at all. The most horror movie could influence him was a bit faster heart rate when the camera rapidly changed the angle. But that was it.

He didn’t get consumed into the story. Not for a second could he believed that the movie monster is real.

That doesn’t mean he had a poor imagination. Just that he was realistic as hell and found emotional excitements elsewhere. Not in horror movies.

For the rest of us. For those who want to be swept away by something else. For those who seek the thrill of the unknown and enjoy the dive into a good story. For us, horror movies make us believe our life is actually endangered.

This ability to let go when watching the story could be connected to some other personal characteristics. They could be enjoyable or harmful, so pay attention.