Celluloid Scares and Psychological Terror
Why do horror movies scare us?
I didn’t particularly appreciate the horror genre for most of my movie-viewing career. I remember watching Scary Movie and Scream while flipping through channels. But I don’t think I sat through a whole horror movie until I was around 20. While studying neuroscience at university, I was interested in taking some of the stranger courses. I decided on Horror Film since the classroom was a theatre, screening a film every lecture.
I was thrown into the deep end, submerged in the genre. The tropes of the final girl, the classic Hammer horror monsters and good old fashioned film censorship. I remember my first time watching The Shining, Hellraiser, Splice, The Bad Seed, Phantom of the Paradise, Night of the Living Dead and Bride of Frankenstein. I immersed myself in texts about philosophy, feminist theory and sociology framed through these films.
I loved these movies, even with their flaws. Now it’s one of my favourite genres to explore, going through years of fantastic movies that I missed out on. I understood the tropes and references in movies like Cabin in the Woods and Tucker and Dale vs Evil. I still remember the majority of the syllabus six years later!
It’s fascinating that we suspend our disbelief while we watch horror movies but still receive…
