The science behind getting scared of horror movies

As I was watching The Grudge movie with my friend at night I felt the tingling sensation that the lady with long black hair would be right behind us. Even though I was with my friend I couldn’t escape the thought that if I went out of the room for some snacks then I would then be alone facing the ghost, because there was no one in the house except us. 

Now, don’t think that I am just a horror virgin or a newbie lighthearted kid. In fact, I am an ardent horror fan who loves watching anything that has a scary element to it. But if I was so afraid then why do I still watch these movies? Aren’t we supposed to enjoy watching something that we actually enjoy during the moment? Yes, to both, but not necessarily. It is not just me who lives in this ‘paradox of horror’ where watching something that makes you scared but you watch it because you love it way too much. Now some might say that I, and all the people that fit the description are adrenaline junkies who are addicted to getting an adrenaline boost from various situations. This might be true, but the terminology in itself is up for debate. 

Even if you’re a hardcore horror fan who just went to a marathon of new horror movies or series like The Witch, It Follows, Hereditary, The Wailing, and The Haunting of the Hill House, and are terrified of it, but still loves watching them, then it will be wrong to assume that you are someone with a rather perverse taste in movies. There are both good physiological and psychological reasons why we love watching horror movies and what impact it has on our brain and body. 

A brief history of seeking out horror movies and scary experiences 

The genre of horror is not new it has been with us for centuries. The Greek tragedies had a recurrent theme of fear, with violence, mayhem, and gore, featured explicitly in all its plays. But we need not go that far to establish horror as a mainstream genre, we just need to look at the recent rise of horror fiction in modern culture. 

Before horror movies were popular, people flocked to various circus events, theatrical shows, and street performances that gave people the ‘thrills’ that they craved. From the Egyptian mummy-themed museums to the Russian ice slides (precursor to the modern-day roller coasters) to magic shows that spooked the audiences with their dramatic performances, the theme of horror has always been omnipresent in the culture of entertainment, though not as pronounced as it is now. 

The fact that people voluntarily craved these ‘thrilling’ experiences is a reflection of the general population’s inherent desire to be scared and spooked, albeit in a safe and controlled environment indicating the rising popularity of the horror genre. However, this desire to be scared is both biological to human nature, since even people who are not big fans of horror still enjoy a bit of crime documentaries or novels featuring fear and violence. In fact, our socialization processes from early childhood have trained us to crave fear and thrill. Classic childhood games of hide-and-seek, twister, musical chair, and tag can be construed as a stress stimulator of predator vs. prey. Even babies desire for themselves a little thrill with the peek-a-boo game. 

The rise of horror movies in mainstream culture

Unsurprisingly so, horror as a genre of movie has exploded in recent decades. From the very first horror movie, Le Manoir du Diable, to the rising horror classics of the early 1900s like Frankenstein and The Unknown, and the 21st-century spate of horror movies like The Conjuring Universe, fear has always remained an underdog of cinema history. 

Horror movies have increased in popularity, with Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan becoming the world’s leading producers and consumers of horror content. According to Statista, horror movies have grossed over $13 billion globally, and in the US, 35 percent of men and 21 percent of women have said that they’ve watched a horror movie in the last 12 months, making horror the 6th most popular genre in the US and Canada in 2022. 

What happens when we a horror movie? Physiological and Psychological effects

So who is to blame, or to credit, for this astounding rise of this seemingly fringe genre? Well, part of it is our physiology. When we watch a horror movie, our brain perceives it as a threat and responds with a fight-or-flight response. This happens so quickly, because of a jump scare scene, that our brain perceives the moment as a threat before we can realize if the threat is real or imagined. 

 This sudden involuntary response can cause a massive effect on your body, causing it to release adrenaline, which in turn results in increased heart rate, increased respiration, dilated pupils, and sweating which works to increase oxygen supply to our muscles and brain. Basically, a fight-or-flight response triggered by a self-induced fear stimulus like watching a horror movie induces the same physiological chain reaction that it would have when facing a real threat. These bodily changes function to prepare our mind to gather more information about the perceived threat so that it can tell our body to get ready for either a fight or a flight response. 

Moreover, the fight-or-flight reaction causes our brain to release a host of chemicals like neurotransmitters and hormones that boost our bodily metabolisms. One of the noteworthy chemicals in endorphins – naturally produced painkillers that work similarly to morphine, reduces the effects of pain and fear by making us feel good. 

Another chemical culprit to blame for our increased consumption of horror movies is dopamine. This is a neurotransmitter that produces pleasurable sensations across our body similar to those caused by endorphins. The continued exposure to these feel-good chemicals and neurotransmitters conditions our brain to seek out similar experiences that will produce the same pleasurable feeling because our brain functions to keep us healthy and happy. This is called addiction, but in a non-threatening nature, so don’t worry! 

Why do we get spooked out by horror movies?

Imagine yourself being subjected to a random throw at you with an unknown object, say a teddy bear, which triggers your brain’s emotional processing center known as the amygdala. The amygdala creates an alert throughout the body which indicates the hypothalamus to order the adrenal glands to release an instant burst of adrenaline, or an ‘action boost’ chemical. This adrenaline raises your heartbeat to increase the flow of blood to your muscles and stimulates the respiration rate which then increases the oxygen supply to your bloodstream. The increased oxygen supply reaches the brain eventually, which enhances your senses making your eyesight and hearing capabilities ready for any threat. 

When the adrenaline rush subsides, your brain’s hypothalamus releases a second series of chemicals, like cortisols and dopamines. These feel-good chemicals then prepare your body for any possible forthcoming action. 

Interestingly though, this all happens before we even recognize that what’s thrown at us is harmful or not. The fight-or-flight response prepares you to defend or attack against any sudden or out-of-ordinary changes in the environment. Think of it like when you’re walking through a bushy path at night and you hear a sudden noise, so you jump and hurry. 

Now go through all of the above steps, but change the stimulus to your eyes getting a sudden exposure to a terribly scathed and bloody face with cheeks cut in half making the lower jaw hang loose by itself, slowly walking towards you with an abnormal body structure that slows the pace of time around you so that you can never escape. All hell breaks loose and your brain immediately triggers the fight-or-flight response. 

Psychologically our brains are trained from a very early age to distinguish what is threatening and what is non-threatening. We are used to watching people that have similar facial and body structures, with two legs and two hands, and a symmetrical facial lineup. The moment we see something that is supposed to be human but does not look very human is when our brain gets confused or senses something wrong. 

Horror movies use this technique to scare you, where they build up a moment filled with dreadful silence and rising monotone sound only to startle you by showing something sinister. They can either choose to extract a sudden scary reaction through jump scares or through dragging the scene only to make it even more disturbing and sense-numbingly horrifying. 

It is a clever process to superimpose a very sinister element into something very ‘normal’. For example, suburbia is commonly associated with the boring monotonous lifestyle of the average American household, but in the Paranormal Activities movies they’ve mixed the monotony of suburban households with unexplainable supernatural elements to give it a disturbing and out-of-place element. If you’ve seen the ending of the movie then you would be justifiably afraid of even moving to a suburban town. 

So getting scared of something or someone can be triggered by variations in commonly known events, objects, and beings to endow these with unknown elements that our brain will perceive as a threat. It can be a seemingly human face but more inhuman, or it can be a normal household environment that gives away a disturbing aura that something is not right or something worse is about to happen. Filmmakers carefully craft these sensations of impending doom by employing audio-visual effects that arouse intense fear and anxiety. 

How horror movies can help in real-life events? 

Going through a scary experience can be something therapeutic in itself. Not that it should be the recommended form of dealing with psychological issues, but nevertheless watching a horror movie can help regulate our emotions. 

The process of a sudden release of chemicals that prepares our brain to get ready for a threat and then the immediate feeling of satisfaction and pleasure caused by dopamine and cortisols makes us feel more confident about any forthcoming threat. No wonder why horror as a genre became so desirable. 

The growing popularity of the horror genre and the increasing fan base has always interested psychologists and sociologists, so much so that they’ve classified three types of horror fans: ‘adrenaline junkies, ‘white knucklers’, and ‘dark copers’. 

Adrenaline junkies are the common types of thrill seekers that you would find. They love chasing experiences that give them the ‘thrills’. They participate in recreational fear experiences that they choose which gives them a boost of dopamine release and adrenaline rush for their participation. 

White knuckles are a different breed, as in they don’t watch horror movies for the adrenaline rush. Most of them are actually scared of watching horror movies and get the usual nightmares after watching them, yet they still go for it. The reason is that they try to downplay the threat by associating the events as funny. 

Dark Copers are a new breed whatsoever. They use horror experiences to deal with their own personal issues of anxiety and depression. The subjective use of the fear stimuli to downregulate or even upregulate it works to retrieve a sense of stability that is more than their actual lives. 

It is therefore right to say that deliberate exposure to horror experiences can be helpful or harmful to the individual. There exists an inverted U-pattern to how much fear people can enjoy. Too little fear and it is boring, and too much fear and it stops becoming fun. 

Various reports suggest horror movies train your brain to respond to real-life threat events. The continued triggering of the fight-or-flight response conditions your mind to be better equipped when faced with an actual threat. This is basically like testing the safety features of a new automobile before it is released into the market. You actually train your brain to deal with uncertain events, so the next time you go to a haunted house with your friends or walk alone on an empty road, you know the worst possible outcomes, and you act accordingly because the acknowledgment of uncertainties helps cushion the blow from the uncertain nature of circumstances. 

Consumption of horror movies or shows can also be mentally stimulant. This is evident in an increasing trend of adopting social issues of racism, sexual violence, and physical abuse in horror movies. Watching horror movies with these underlying themes raises awareness about our current society, so people who would not normally watch an hour-long documentary about social issues would most definitely watch a horror movie with a social undertone. They most likely wouldn’t know about the actual theme of the movie but it will be self-evident in the end. But many of us do know that, and watch horror movies for the explicit purpose of exploring different themes about the society packaged in a socially acceptable form of content that would also be entertaining. 

Try watching ‘It Follows’ as a cautionary tale about unprotected sex. ‘Babadook’ is a story of grief repression. ‘Midsommar’ is a dramatized version of betrayal of trust in a relationship. ‘Hereditary’ is a narration on the suppression of family trauma. Almost all the horror movies that you would find in recent years have a message about the current state of events in society. So if you know that while you’re watching a horror movie then it would make it more fun and interesting. 

It can be implied that horror as a genre has evolved, from a mere recreational experience of thrill to a more intellectual exploration of social, psychological, and economic issues. Consumption of such content not only informs you about the current state of reality but also prepares you to mitigate any uncertainties that you might encounter in your own life. Add that to the usual tropes of how miserably the characters in a horror movie fail to make sense of the events and how flawed they can be, it can be caution to not repeat the same mistakes. 

Beginner tips for watching horror movies 

Now that we’ve established how horror movies can be helpful, you can take out the popcorn and sit on your comfy sofa to watch that horror movie on your watchlist that you’ve been skipping because you’re afraid to watch. But the question is, how do you, as a complete beginner, attempt to watch a horror movie that you know will scare you? You can use some of the tried and tested steps to give a fun experience while watching any horror movie.

• Find your comfort zone: Seek out content from less intense scary media formats like books and podcasts. These are definitely scary but way less intense than movies or video games, as the former do not capture your senses enough to fully immerse you in the dark world of horror. 

• Baby steps first: Start small and watch content that is relatively less scary than the standard horror movies. Think of cartoons or animes with a scary element to it. 

• Keep your distance: Horror movies have a way of scaring the audience by using some theatrics – think of the “based on true events” line at the end of the movie that keeps you on edge. There are also sneaky visual tricks to maximize your immersion like shaky cameras that feel like you are actually in the movie.  

• Watch during the daytime: You can make yourself immune to these devil’s tricks by simply watching a horror movie in broad daylight or turning the lights on. You can also try to reframe the movie by using humor – try commenting sarcasm on the actors’ costumes and makeup.

• Watch with your friends: This is an effective remedy for any horror movie. Changing the social setting from watching a horror movie alone in a dark room to a recreational and fun activity with your friends greatly reduces the scare. Besides it’s more fun to watch movies with your friends or loved ones. 

Finally, chill out a bit and take deep breaths because you might need it when you’re chased by a stranger in a dark alley.