the horror, the horror
why anxious folks love a good scare
I first watched The Shining my junior year of high school at a friend’s house. She lived on the edge of town in a particularly wooded neighborhood, the perfect venue for a scary movie screening. I went not because I had any interest in horror movies, but for the same reason anyone in high school does anything: my friends were doing it, and therefore I figured I ought to do it too.
Honestly, I expected to hate The Shining. I expected to spend the evening watching it through my fingers. I was afraid of horror movies because I was told by everyone and everything around me that they were bad, or unpleasant, or scarring. But the movie began and I was entranced. I loved it.
It was scary, yes. But it was also beautiful. I loved the stylized hotel setting and its hypnotic hallways, doors, and rug patterns. I loved the slow descent into madness and chaos. I loved that I was presented with disturbing images with little to no explanation. I loved that I got to sit in my terror surrounded by others who were just as terrified as I was. I even loved when a friend snuck away to “use the bathroom,” only to worm her way outside the house and slam her fists on the sliding glass door of the room we were all sitting in, making everyone simultaneously jump and scream and laugh. I loved talking about the movie after, posing questions about what we just watched and why we felt the way that we did. It was a revelation.
Looking back, I see now that horror movies gave me a way to experience my anxiety in a group setting, an experience I didn’t know was possible. I could see and hear what was making me nervous on screen and share that experience with other people. And yes, I did stay up all night worried I’d wake up to “Redrum” written on the back of my door, but it was a thrilling kind of worry. It didn’t weigh on me as much as it intrigued me.
But it’s not like I’m the first to make this connection. There’s a lot already written about the link between anxiety and horror movies. As noted in Psychology Today earlier this year, it isn’t really news that those of us with anxiety disorders or an anxious disposition tend to gravitate towards horror movies specifically because they allow us to make space for our worry within a controlled, limited narrative and time frame.
In recent years, horror films have honed in on exploring anxiety in a variety of ways, particularly the anxiety felt by marginalized groups. Jordan Peele’s Us and Get Out have been written about extensively as films that dig in to racial anxiety, placing Black Americans and fear of white violence at the heart of the story. White supremacy, and it’s ugly disguises, are the frightening monster looming just out of focus. It Follows uses women’s fear of slut-shaming to power its premise that a curse can only be passed on through sex.
And most notably, let’s not forget the swell of pandemic-horror viewers (myself included) earlier this year who watched movies like Contagion on repeat. We were all about to shelter-in-place for an unspecified amount of time. So why not try to understand and channel our fear through a movie that eerily echoed our present-day predicament?
Horror TV series allow for a (sometimes) less intense, and perhaps more ruminative, look at what underscores our fears.
The new series “Ratched” on Netflix explores America’s history of asylums and institutionalization, as well as the conformity that created abhorrent living conditions for queer, disabled, and marginalized groups in the mid-twentieth century. This is done by humanizing the infamous villain Nurse Mildred Ratched (from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest).
Another new series, HBO’s “Lovecraft Country,” warps writer and noted racist H.P. Lovecraft’s monster tales as a means of revisiting and rewriting the roots of horror and sci-fi as they appeared during Jim Crow America (although it should be noted that the book of the same name was written by white writer Matt Ruff).
“The Haunting of Hill House,” a loose adaptation first released in 2018 of Shirley Jackson’s famous novel, explores family trauma and grief, as well as the family’s fear of succumbing to genetic mental illness. Its latest companion series, 2020’s “The Haunting of Bly Manor,” is an adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and is less about anxiety than it is about love and loss, specifically asking the audience to consider by the end if “this ghost story is a love story.”
If a horror story could also be a love story, then perhaps the real terror comes from caring about other people. We come to care about their survival, or their unfinished business, or the characters’ anguish and worry. Or, perhaps, as Mike Flanagan, creator of “The Haunting of Bly Manor” and “The Haunting of Hill House," says, “A ghost is an impact from the past on the present.”
Horror is often, if not always, related at least tangentially to mental health and social issues, but more than anything, it’s about communal feeling. The joy of watching a horror movie in theaters or with a group of friends (pre-pandemic, of course) is experiencing that fight-or-flight terror and care all at once and talking about it together after.
Back in the Before Times, one of my best friends and I would go see horror movies in theaters together specifically so we could talk about them together afterwards on our way home. Back in 2018, we saw Hereditary together in theaters and we were both stunned. Acclaimed director Ari Aster’s debut was the most disturbing movie we’d ever watched, and also one of the most confusing.
We walked around the block outside the cinema several times trying to digest what we saw. And I found comfort that we could try to disentangle our fear together. Even once we both got home that night, we were sending each other articles further unpacking Hereditary’s slow-burning, agonizing scares. And the two of us weren’t alone in this quest: folks like Ryan Hollinger also went online to share “Why Hereditary Broke Me.” All you have to do is type “Hereditary movie” into YouTube to find a wealth of takes on this intimately unsettling film.
Even if you watch the film alone (which I definitely don’t recommend), you’re not alone in your discomfort watching it and unpacking it after, or any other horror movie now for that matter. It’s a small comfort during Spooky Season In These Pandemic Times: when I watch something scary I can at least have the communal experience of reading, watching, and interacting with others who are streaming horror and want to talk about it online.
I definitely understand those who don’t have any desire to watch horror, now or ever. Not to mention there’s a lot to be scared of today in pre-election-2020-America. A lot of the pop culture that used to soothe me don’t hit the same anymore (more on that in my essay up this week at GEN Magazine, and yes this is a shameless plug, I’m still figuring out how to make these e-newsletters Not Weird, sorry guys).
So for many it might be weird to think that I’m taking comfort in a horror movie or two or ten this month, but honestly, these are the times when the horror and suspense movie/tv genre(s) ends up being most relaxing, even when they also give me nightmares. At least when the credits roll, the scares are done. At least these nightmares, unlike our current political reality, come with a satisfying ending.
For a brief window of time, I get to indulge in those echoes of the past, give in to superstition and the unknown. I can blame the unknown on the ghosts and the monsters for everything I can’t understand. It’s strange, sure, but this is the season where so many of us are indulging all together, and honestly? It feels pretty good.
