Goodbye Mommy, Hello Nightmares.

Goodnight Mommy the Austrian horror film made headlines this week following claims that, “The scariest movie of all time is actually just the trailer for a scary movie.” This claim came form a GQ article earlier this month after the first trailer for the film was released. This sentiment has been echoed across the Internet but what makes this particular trailer so scary and can it live up to the hype?

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kXpUaQpXMA[/embed]

“In the heat of the summer, a lonesome house in the countryside between woods and corn fields, live nine-year-old twin brothers who are waiting for their mother. When she comes home, bandaged after cosmetic surgery, nothing is like before. The children start to doubt that this woman is actually their mother. It emerges an existential struggle for identity and fundamental trust.” — Ulrich Seidl Film.

Currently the trailer has been viewed over five million times on YouTube, the trailer is certainly disturbing, however opinion remains divided as to whether the trailer is as scary as some articles would have you believe.

Regardless of whether you found the trailer scary or not, it prompts the question why would anyone want to be scared by movies in the first place? No one can quite seem to pin point our human fascination of horror, whether it speaks to our primal self or our sense of gruesome justice, many theories have emerged over the millennia attempting to figure out the allure of fear.

Theories stretch as far back as Greek philosopher Aristotle, who incited the process of catharsis; the purge of negative emotions through violent imagination. Perhaps the most infamous scholar within the psychoanalytic community Sigmund Freud theorised that humans preoccupation with horror emerged as images and thoughts of the primitive id, which were being suppressed by the civilised ego. Freud’s protégé Jung attributed the fascination to primordial archetypes repressed within our collective subconscious. In other words deeply repressed mother issues, which seems a highly fitting analysis for the Goodnight Mommy trailer.

In more recent times film scholar Noël Carroll presents the notion of horror films being a product of human curiosity and fascination, noting the often-supernatural themes of horror movies. Hand-in-hand with this notion is the theory of Dispositional Alignment, which prescribes to our twisted sense of justice and enjoyment of seeing those whom we feel deserve it, be punished in the most gruesome of ways. Whether there is any truth to these theories however, is still up for debate.

Others suggest it takes particular characteristics for a person to gain enjoyment from horror. Research conducted in 2005 studied the relationship between viewer enjoyment and frightening films highlighting theories that could explain why certain people seek enjoyment from horror films.

The first theory the study highlighted is Excitation Transfer; the theory argues that the negative feelings evoked during horror movies simultaneously heighten positive feelings experienced by viewers. In particular audiences are supposed to experience heightened enjoyment when the protagonist triumphs. However some smaller studies have found that peoples enjoyment was at its highest during the scary parts of horror movies, which could attribute to why many people still claim to have enjoyed horror movies that have unhappy endings.

Another theory presented proposes that people who score high in the sensation seeking scale are more interested in thrilling experiences including horror films. Moreover it has also been hypothesised that people with less empathy enjoy horror films more than those with high levels of empathy. Building upon this theory of empathy it’s also thought that for some, enjoyment of horror films is dependent upon dissociation from threats and personal experiences. Maybe that’s one of the reasons the trailer is so disturbing, the threat of chomping down on a cockroach is all too real.

Don’t worry too much though if you still enjoy horror films so far none of these theories have produced enough conclusive evidence to determine exactly why certain people enjoy horror movies more than others. With all the hype that’s surrounded the Goodnight Mommy trailer its more than enough of an excuse to go see the movie and satisfy our disturbed sense of curiosity.