A moment of horror

Over the past few months my passion for horror movies has grown. I’ve always enjoyed a good scary movie; I can remember watching old Hammer movies and those Universal monster flicks on Saturday evenings when I was around 8, and these films still hold me in awe when I watch them

I recently found a DVD boxset of the Universal monster movies from the 1930s-40s. Watching Frankenstein, the Wolf man or Dracula again reminded me of my childhood fascination with horror. As I’ve gotten older fewer films have truly scared me.

I started questioning why horror films are so appealing, as it almost seems contradictory to enjoy watching something that causes fear. To begin with I reasoned that it was probably related to the car crash effect, how we slow down in traffic to peak at an accident no matter how appalling. Maybe horror films are so enjoyable because we have a curious nature, an subconscious desire to witness the terrible.

But maybe a film lover’s attraction to horror is based on an emotional level. On any given day we can laugh, we may cry, we might feel love. But how often are we scared? I guess for most people fear isn’t a common emotion, so horror films allow us to enjoy a form of escapism that, when done well, can generate a familiar emotion we rarely experience.