The month of October bears a special significance to those special (perhaps a little twisted) few who nurse festering soft-spots for horror movies. October is the only socially acceptable time of year when horror-aficionados can come out of the haunted woodwork and revel in 31 days of ghosts, ghouls, and gore. The month of October to the rest of the world—those ranging in mildly off-put to majorly disgusted—becomes a time during which the average movie-goer tests their steel against whatever the horror community has to offer. But why do we watch horror movies? What base psychological instinct urges us to scare ourselves? And on a larger scale, what is it in us that makes us gawk at things we should not see and should not want to see?
There have been a lot of theories that have tried—to varying degrees of success—to explain and account for our fascination with the horror genre. Many theories are as outlandish as the movies for which they seek to account. Several studies have been published about the excitation transfer paradigm which, for concision’s sake, basically means that we like to see good people suffer, but enjoy ourselves more when the forces of good ultimately triumph over the forces of evil. A highly contested theory proposes that people who enjoy horror movies have lower levels of empathy than those who do not, while a simultaneously occurring theory proposes that horror movies are in fact an exercise in empathy. A more-or-less completely disproven theory is the disturbingly named “snuggle-theory.” Wildly hetero and cisnormative, it proposes that young people like watching horror movies because girls like seeing boys act tough and protective, while boys like seeing girls act scared and submissive. Most people, however, would find the snuggle-theory more horrifying than any horror movie ever made.
Psychology tells us that our need to look at disturbing images could stem from a combination of sadomasochistic tendencies—we like to imagine ourselves hurt or being hurt—and basic, run-of-the-mill voyeuristic feelings—the inalienable interest in the secret or the hidden. It is the complex weaving of these two influences that drives our morbid curiosity. Other possible explanations include that we as humans, naturally strive to identify possible threats to our survival in order to better our chances at leading a long happy life and propagating bountifully. On a more optimistic note, some psychologists say that our obsession with the grotesque and the obscene is the result of an intrinsic yearning to empathize more deeply with others; sort of like a watered-down G-rated snuggle-theory. Empathy leads us to form closer bonds with others, a skill that has proven time and time again to benefit survival for all.
Our fascination with the grotesque doesn’t stop with horror movies and ghost stories; it creeps furtively into different aspects of our lives. Everything from media-coverage of homicides and tragedies to accidents on highways is tinged by our morbid curiosity. We seem to enjoy watching horrifying news, we slow down our cars to look at bad pile-ups. The 9/11 live-news reports on YouTube have millions of views despite happening years before YouTube’s conception. North American culture is absolutely enraptured by serial killers. There are countless websites where one can purchase serial-killer memorabilia, and even artwork painted by the killers in prison.
At the end of the day, different people like horror movies for different reasons. Trying to summarize the entirety of human experience and perception into one pithy theory never bodes well for anyone. Different creeps for different peeps, or something like that. As for the obscene, and the grotesque, and the truly horrifying, maybe we just like looking at scary things because we know at any moment, we can look away.