What Makes A Horror Movie Scary?
I have never screamed at a horror movie! Pussies!
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I love horror movies. But I have not been scared by one since I was a small child. And I have never screamed at one. No matter how gore filled and extreme, I am not disgusted, shocked or emotionally damaged in any way by watching horror movies. I may well be desensitised, after decades of watching them. But for me horror movies are pure escapist entertainment. I marvel at the clever special effects, laugh heartily at the most gruesome blood, guts and gore. Cheer at the ingenuity of how the film-makers think of new ways to kill people. I root for the psychos, the monsters, the possessed, and revel in the slaughter of stupid teenagers that go in the woods, derelict house or abandoned hospital alone.
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But that's not how it is for the majority of people. Most people don't love horror movies. Many people refuse to watch them, and do find them disturbing, and simply too much to handle. There are huge swathes of people that jump, scream and feel physically sick by what they see on screen when confronted by a horror movie. Often when they have only experienced what I call "horror lite", the Hollywood horror. If I sat these people down and showed them the movies from the darkest depths of horror cinema, they would likely need years of therapy.
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But like I said, I'm likely desensitised. After all when presented with lists of the most disturbing and supposedly scary horror movies ever made, I often be heard muttering, "Boring... Cheesy... Really? Come on! ... Yawn... Boring... My little kid could make a scarier film... BORRRING!!!" And then there are others who look at the same list and exclaim, "What kind of twisted mind enjoys watching these things?"
I read a piece by a psychologist that claimed not only did people who enjoyed horror movies have little or no imagination, also that by watching horror movies it could adversely affect the imaginative abilities of viewers. How that idiot ever got his doctorate is beyond me. As creativity and imagination is what is at the very heart of horror, and often I've found people who are fans of horror are also creative and imaginative people. In fact psychologists have been trying for years to understand what the fascination with horror is. And on the whole have failed, with tenuous theories at best, that talk of people becoming aroused by the movies, enjoying the rush of adrenaline they get from the fear, etc... |
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The theories are too boring and misguided to even bother listing. Flawed studies, whose test subjects often range from "average" cinema goers (not horror fans), to school kids. They talk of the fear factor, the fight or flight response. Sure we know, as I mentioned earlier, some people are much weaker than others when it comes to stomaching horror. We don't need psychological studies to tell us that. There was one study that evaluated the psychology of college student couples, who went on horror movie date nights to the cinema. The movies they evaluated them on after seeing? Scream, Scream 2 and I Know What You Did Last Summer! Really? Come on! Those are what I meant when I said "horror lite". Those movies aren't really horror movies, they play at being horror movies.
Most studies, and I have been through quiet a few, start with the premise of studying fear. Utterly missing the fact that true fans of horror, don't watch them to be scared. There was a study done in October 2014, where a horror fan was placed in an MRI machine, and shown clips of horror movies and non-horror movies. Apparently he was anxious going into the machine, and calmed down once he was shown clips of horror movies. The subject had no fear response, no activation of the amygdala, which is the part of the brain which triggers the fight or flight fear response. In fact the areas of the subject's brain that lit-up were the those that deal with focus and engaging attention. The opposite kind of results that would be expected, and likely attained from a non-horror fan.
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If you're going to do a psychological evaluation of the effects of horror movies on people, surely the first thing to get right, is to find some truly hardcore horror movies and see what impact they have on their minds. Now that'd be a study worth doing. I suggest it be done Clockwork Orange style, with the participants straitjacketed and strapped into their chairs, eyes clamped permanently open, so they can't look away from the horror on the screen. With creepy looking medical technicians dropping saline solution into their eyes every so often. Then drag out a few choice piece of bloody good horror, and see how they roll with that. No possibility of fight or flight, just a pure unadulterated non-stop horror roller-coaster ride. Then "evaluate" them for the psychological effects of watching horror movies. I know there are some twisted horror fans out there that would not only love to be a test subject in that experiment, they'd probably bring along their own straitjacket from home. Along with a a whole bunch of rare, uncut, bootleg, import, extended director's cut DVDs of their favourite movies. Asking for their popcorn to be buttered and not salty.
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Hype & Hysteria: The Gory Story Of Video Nasties - Early 80s UK, as home video machine became popular, there was moral outcry at the horror titles that were hitting the shelves.
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Bloody Good Scenes Of Mass Murder - When horror decides to turn it up to 11. Gallons of blood and high body counts. We present some of the bloodiest horror movie scenes ever.
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