In the spirit of the month of Halloween, I would like to investigate the psychological mechanisms that determine the existence of horror films. I want to firstly explore their history, how they work and finally why they are so popular in our society and why people expose themselves to this type of fear. This will be a small dive into the world of horror films, as there are so many nuances, not only between the movies themselves, but within the genre.
According to the Dictionary of Film Studies, horror films are a large group of films that via “the representation of disturbing and dark subject matter, seek to elicit responses of fear, terror, disgust, shock, suspense and horror from their viewers” (Kuhn & Westwell, 2012). There are many subgenres including but not limited to: comedic, folk, found footage, gothic, natural, slasher and teen. Etchinson (2011) has noted that horror movies are generally ignored in popular culture, comparably to horror literature, they are viewed with alarm when they irritate authority and are sometimes acknowledged with “bemused” tolerance. Freud defined horror as “unheimlich” or unhomely or uncanny, something that should have remained secret and hidden but has come to light (Freud, 1919).
A Brief History of Horror
Before movies, there were written or orally passed down stories of horror. It is not atypical to see gore and monsters in Greek Epics such as Homer’s Odyssey or Iliad, or tales of Evil during the middle ages, (see Dante’s Divine Comedy (1472)) (Dixon, 2010). The importance of horror literature goes without saying, but for the sake of example I would like to mention the popular success of Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Goethe’s Faust (1829). Faust, in theory, has been attributed to spearhead the transition from the German enlightenment into the Romantic Period (Orvieto, 2006). Other notable horror pieces from history are: the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe (The Murders in Rue Morgue (1841) and more), RL Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898).
The first horror movies can be traced to the beginning of cinema, particularly to French illusionist and filmmaker Georges Méliès in the late 19th century (Rhodes, 2002). One of his best known works is the 2 minute long silent film Le Manoir du Diable (1896), also known as, “The Haunted Castle”, where a troubled devil haunts the guests of the estate. Another successful movie worth mentioning, is the German Expressionist’s very own Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (“The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, 1920). This movie was an example of Expressionist film and influenced many horror movies to come, through it’s use of distorted images and unreliable narration (Jung & Schatzberg, 1999).
The 1930’s produced movies filled with monsters such as Frankenstein, Dracula and Mummies. The 1960’s had Hitchcock pioneering the psychological horror thriller film, through his mastery of suspense (McDevitt & Juan, 2009). The 1970’s saw a shift into what we now know as modern horror, where artistic facets are intertwined with societal themes (Waller, 2005). Notable filmmakers of this period are Dario Argento with Deep Red (1975) and Suspiria (1977), Stanley Kubrick with The Shining (1980), Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) and David Cronenberg with Videodrome (1983). The introduction of CGI in the 90’s gave life to movies such as Mimic (1997, Guillermo Del Toro) and Sleepy Hollow (1999, Tim Burton). Comedy horror, with self- irony and parody of the genre, became prevalent in the 2000’s. Found footage horror is a new addendum to the genre in the last decade, with the notable Paranormal Activity Series (2007- present). These movies usually have extremely low budgets and high box office profits.
How Horror Movies Work
According to Dr. Riggio some of the main themes that scare us in horror movies are the fear of death, darkness, dangerous animals (such as insects, snakes etc), scary settings, disfigurement, dismemberment, suspense, music, and abnormal objects, people or places (Riggio, 2014). Through fMRI, researchers found that suspense, where fear slowly increases, regions in the brain involved with visual & auditory perception become more activated, and after there is a sudden threat, there is more activation in regions involved with emotion processing, threat evaluation and decision making. Horror movies therefore exploit this excitatory fight or flight system increasing certain rousing neurotransmitters (Hudson et al., 2020).
Why We Like Horror Movies
There is undoubtedly an aesthetic paradox of pleasurable fear (Hanich, 2011). The foundation of this representational art is that (1) fear involves being in danger, and (2) normal moviegoers do not believe that they are in danger (Walton, 1990). Even Aristotle has addressed this question: “Why do we enjoy still lifes with ugly things in them? Why do we enjoy tragedy?” (Holland, 2009). Panksepp’s theory of “invigorated feeling of anticipation” explains that when we feel unpleasurable emotions in passive situations we must not do anything about it. Through Kant’s “disinterestedness” we can explain the liking akin to this subjective behavior, to the unpleasant situations receding in the fantasy world, unlike the ones in real life (TenHouten, 2018). According to Holland, there is also an evolutionary explanation, where people are attracted to gruesome events as cautionary tales for future use to maximize survival. This is the same mechanism at play when people slow down to view an accident on the side of the road. A Jungian approach may be used to explain this attraction to horror movies. Jung believed that material and technological benefits that come from the scientific rationality of the last 500 years come to a great cost for the psyche itself (Hauke, 2015). The horror movie then acts as a vessel for the need of entertainment and disinterest in rationality, paralleling a “postmodern Jungian distrust in the achievements and place of human consciousness in nature”.
Popularity
Some individual differences have been found in response to horror by Neil (2019). For example men, tend to seek out horror movies more than women, this may be due to women being more prone to disgust sensitivity and anxiety. Low empathy, fearfulness and sensation seeking are more related to horror seeking and enjoyment. Through-out life there is a shift in children of being more afraid of symbolic stimuli to later being afraid of concrete or realistic stimuli.
There have been cases of cinematic-related psychiatric cases, namely the case of a woman with intrusive thoughts and flashbacks of the demonic possession from the film The Exorcist. This case shows how an individuals personality structure combined with the stressors they are experiencing from films can intertwine and create what is known as “cinematic neurosis”. It is important to note that movies may also act as cautionary tales (Ballon & Leszcz, 2007; Kline, 2018).
Conclusions
The interest that humanity has with horror is fascinating, but it goes beyond our understanding in psychology and film cognition (Hauke, 2015). It is possible that through the comforts of modern life, our subconscious needs an escape into the darkness of society. Maybe, when and if our lives become filled with horror, there will be no need for this imagination and escapism will only be filled by romantic, comedic or inspirational movies.
Works Cited
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). A dictionary of film studies (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford
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Etchison, D. (2011). “Foreword” in Nightmare movies: Horror on screen since the 1960s. ed. K. Newman (London: Bloomsbury Publishing).
Freud, S. (1919/2003). The uncanny. London: Penguin.
Dixon, W. W. (2010). A history of horror. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Orvieto, P. (2006). Il mito di Faust: L'uomo, Dio, il diavolo. Roma, Italia: Salerno. doi:10.1400/102085
Rhodes, G. D. (n.d.). Mockumentaries and the Production of Realist Horror. Questia, 21(3), 2002nd ser. Retrieved October 9, 2020, from https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1- 95501717/mockumentaries-and-the-production-of-realist-horror
Jung, U., & Schatzberg, W. (1999). Beyond Caligari: The films of Robert Wiene. New York: Berghahn Books.
McDevitt, J., & Juan, E. S. (2011). A year of Hitchcock: 52 weeks with the master of suspense. Lanham (Md.): The Scarecrow Press.
Waller, G. A. (2005). American horrors: Essays on the modern American horror film. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Riggio, R. (2014, October 21). The Top Ten Things That Make Horror Movies Scary. Retrieved October 9, 2020, from https://www.psychologytoday.com
Hudson et al. (2020) Dissociable neural systems for unconditioned acute and sustained fear. NeuroImage. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116522
Tenhouten, W. D. (2018). Anticipation and Exploration of Nature and the Social World: Natural- History versus Social-Cognition Theories of the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Sociology Mind, 08(04), 320-344. doi:10.4236/sm.2018.84021
Hauke, C. (2015). Horror films and the attack on rationality. The Journal of Analytical Psychology, 60(5), 736–740. https://doi-org.proxy.library.emory.edu/10.1111/1468- 5922.12181
Hanich, J. (2011). Cinematic emotion in horror films and thrillers: The aesthetic paradox of pleasurable fear. New York: Routledge.
Walton, K. L. (1978). Fearing Fictions. The Journal of Philosophy, 75(1), 5. doi:10.2307/2025831
Sofia Wolfson October 11th 2020
Holland, N. N. (2009). Literature and the brain. Gainesville, FL: PsyArt Foundation. Holland, N. N. (2010, January 4). Why Are There Horror Movies? Retrieved October 9, 2020, from https://www.psychologytoday.com
Martin, G. N. (2019). (Why) do you like scary movies? A review of the empirical research on psychological responses to horror films. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. https://doi- org.proxy.library.emory.edu/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02298
Ballon, B., & Leszcz, M. (2007). Horror films: Tales to master terror or shapers of trauma? American Journal of Psychotherapy, 61(2), 211–230.
Kline, J. (2018). Fleeing from and fighting with the exorcist. Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, 12(2), 10–25. https://doi-org.proxy.library.emory.edu/10.1080/19342039.2018.1442103
Sofia Wolfson
Emory University
University of Miami