Research has shown that watching horror movies can help relieve anxiety and build emotional resilience.
ADVERTISINGSome people just don’t get it. You tell them that you love them horror movies and their faces distort with confusion, perhaps with a little disgust. How can anyone enjoy being afraid?
It’s a question that the Recreational Fear Laboratory, based at Aarhus University in Denmark, has dedicated itself to exploring, conducting studies to better understand the ways in which recreational fear (think roller coasters, true crime podcasts, and horror movies) can bring us joy, connection, and meaning.
“Although it is very common, probably almost universal, to find pleasure in some type of terrifying activity, it is little scientifically studied“, Mathias Clasen, co-director of the Recreational Fear Laboratory, tells ‘Euronews Culture’.
“An interesting finding that has emerged from many of our studies is that it appears to be healthy for people to play with fear,” says Clasen, adding that by exploring the intriguing relationship between anxiety and recreational fear, they have discovered that horror movies could be a “potential medicine“.
It’s good news for those of us who have always sought solace in horror movies, choosing to escape any internal surge of doom through an external vision of terror that is visceral and sometimes violent, but controllable: we can turn it off at any time.
“For some people with anxiety, they walk and act in a fog of bad feelings that have no clear cause and over which they have no control,” explains Clasen. “But that totally changes if you’re watching a horror movie. You know you chose her. “You know exactly why your heart is pounding or why you have butterflies in your stomach.”
The return of blood-spattered cinema
“There is an interesting empirical fact, and that is that the horror genre beat all the records above in terms of box office fee during the pandemic,” says Clasen. “So, when the world started to become scary and unpredictable, with a mysterious global disease and a war in Europe and, you know, all kinds of bad things happening, that’s when people turned to to scary stories. We use those kinds of things to face the horrors of reality“.
Las horror movies have followed dominating the box office this year, with Damien Leone’s clown gore flick ‘Terrifier 3’ becoming the highest-grossing unrated film of all time, and Parker Finn’s pop-influenced parasite demon sequel ‘Smile 2’ grossing more than 84 million dollars (77 million euros) worldwide at the time of writing this article.
Then there was the huge success of Coralie Fargeat’s body horror spectacle ‘The Substance’, which won Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival. Independent production companies such as NEON and A24, which have gained a cult following for their production of psychological horror unique and often bizarre, they have also had an undeniable impact on the modern genre, contributing ‘Longlegs’, ‘Immaculate’, ‘MaXXXine’ and this year’s upcoming ‘Heretic’, to name a few.
In short: it seems that horror, especially gruesome horror, is having a great moment today, which is simultaneously exciting, intriguing and strange, especially considering his history of being maligned and belittled.
“That attitude has changed in the last six or seven years. It’s changing. But people are still more comfortable saying that they enjoy psychological horror movies in polite company than, you know, gore horror movies or even supernatural movies,” says Clasen.
Jump scares for self-care
The popularity of gory movies this year suggests that more people are seeking extreme expressions of fear, confined within the confines of fiction, like a escapism method of the unknown fears of an increasingly anxious reality.
An aspect of terror that provides a almost universal adrenaline response is he sudden startle. While many consider it a cheap gimmick, it has become a defining feature of the genre, and was even used in a recent study that tracked the pulses of hundreds of volunteers to determine the scariest movies of all time.
“Modern horror movies have on average about ten jump scares, so that’s about one every ten minutes,” says Clasen. “Unlike scenes that generate anxiety or apprehension, sudden startle produces a so-called startle response, which is a reflection. It is a type of highly oriented biological response. basic and primitive before a possible sudden threat. And that works for everyone.”
As part of your investigationClasen explored the psychological impact of shocks by gathering a group of participants in a house of horrors with surveillance cameras, and evaluating their responses to choreographed shocks.
ADVERTISING“We saw that about 80% of the participants smiled or laughed right after the shock, suggesting, again, this interesting relationship between horror and humorand maybe the feeling of relief what you get,” he says.
“Also, anyone who has seen a horror movie in a cine You will be familiar with this feeling of collective shock that takes you out of the movie and into your own body, and then the joy of laughing with everyone else with relief, and maybe also the embarrassment right after.”
What scares us is unique to each one
For the most part, the answers to fear are completely subjective and unique for each individual. For example, Clasen has found that people who believe in the supernatural are understandably more frightened by movies that feature supernatural elements.
“We also see that women, statistically speaking, tend to respond more strongly to scenes of bodily violation and gore, and to images that evoke more disgust,” he says. “There are some differences at the individual and gender levels, but we still don’t have much information about it.”
ADVERTISINGThe good news is, if you plan on curling up and watching something disturbing after Halloweenyou can be sure that it is actually a method of self-care and developing psychological resilience. “We’ve done some research on psychological resilience and recreational fear with results that suggest you can actually train your ability to deal with negative emotions by watching horror movies.
