Desperately seeking scares: How horror movies can help us feel less anxious

Poltergeist.

Some people just don’t get it. You tell them you love horror movies and their faces contort in confusion - maybe a little disgust. How could anyone enjoy being scared?

It’s a question that the Recreational Fear Lab, based at the Aarhus University in Denmark, has dedicated itself to exploring, conducting studies to better understand the ways in which recreational fear - think rollercoasters, true crime podcasts and horror movies - can bring us joy, connection and meaning.

“Even though it's very common, probably close to universal, to find pleasure in some kind of frightening activity, it's scientifically under-studied,” Mathias Clasen, co-director of the Recreational Fear Lab, tells Euronews Culture.

“One interesting finding that's emerged from many of [our] studies is that it seems to be healthy for people to play with fear,” Clasen says, adding that through exploring the intriguing relationship between anxiety and recreational fear, they’ve found that horror movies could be a “potential medicine”.

It’s welcome news for those of us that have always sought solace in scary movies, choosing to escape any internal swell of doom through an external vision of terror that’s visceral and sometimes violent, yet controllable - we can switch it off at any point.

“For some people with anxiety, they sort of walk around and act in a fog of bad feeling that doesn't have any clear cause, and over which they have no control,” Clasen explains.“But that totally changes if you're putting on a horror movie. You know you chose it. You know exactly why your heart is pounding or why you have butterflies in your stomach.”

The return of blood-splattered cinema

“There is an interesting empirical fact, which is that the horror genre beat all previous records in terms of box office share during the pandemic,” Clasen says. “So, when the world started getting scary and unpredictable, with a worldwide mysterious disease and war in Europe and, you know, all kinds of bad things happening, at that moment, people turned to scary stories. We used that kind of thing to cope with the horrors of reality.”

Horror movies have continued to dominate the box office this year, with Damien Leone’s gory clown slasher Terrifier 3 becoming the highest grossing unrated movie of all time, and Parker Finn's pop-inflected parasitic demon sequel Smile 2 grossing over $84 (€77) million worldwide at the time of writing.

Then there was the huge success of Coralie Fargeat’s squelchy body horror spectacle The Substance, which won Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival.

Indie production companies like NEON and A24, which have gained cult followings for their unique and often strange psychological horror output, have also had an undeniable impact on the modern genre, contributing Longlegs, Immaculate, MaXXXine and the upcoming Heretic this year, to name a few.

In summary: It feels like horror - especially gruesome horror - is having a big moment right now, which is all at once exciting, intriguing and odd - especially considering its history of being maligned and looked down upon.

“That [attitude] has changed in the past 6 or 7 years. It is changing. But people are still more comfortable saying that they enjoy psychological horrors in polite company than, you know, splatter movies or even supernatural movies,” Clasen says.

Jump scares for self care

The popularity of gorier films this year suggests that more people are seeking out extreme expressions of fear, confined within the boundaries of fiction, as a method of escapism from the unknowns dreads of an increasingly anxious reality.

One aspect of horror that provides an almost universal adrenalised response is the jump scare. While considered a cheap gimmick by many, it’s become a defining genre trait - 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 per ten minutes,” Clasen says. “In contrast to scenes that generate anxiety or apprehension, the jump scare produces a so-called startle response, which is a reflex. It's a very basic, primitive biological sort of orienting response to a potential sudden threat. And that works on everybody.”

As part of his research, Clasen explored the psychological impact of jump scares by gathering a group of participants in a haunted house with surveillance cameras, evaluating their responses to choreographed jump scares.

“We saw that close to 80% of the participants actually smiled or laughed just after the jump scare, suggesting, again, this interesting relationship between horror and humour, and maybe the sense of relief you get,” he says.

“Also, anybody who has seen a horror movie in a theatre will be familiar with this sense of the collective jump scare that sort of pulls you out of the movie and into your own body, and then the joy of laughing with everybody else in relief, and maybe also embarrassment just after.”

What scares us is unique to us

For the most part, fear responses are completely subjective and unique to each individual. For example, Clasen has discovered that people who believe in the supernatural are, understandably, more frightened by movies featuring supernatural elements.

“We also see that women, statistically speaking, tend to respond more strongly to scenes of body violation and gore, and the more sort of disgust evoking imagery,” he says.“There are some individual level and gender level differences, but we don't have a lot of insight into that yet.”

The good news is, if you’re planning on snuggling down and watching something disturbing this Halloween, you can rest assured that it’s actually a method of self care - and building psychological resilience.

“We have done some research on psychological resilience and recreational fear with results suggesting that you can actually train your ability to cope with negative emotion by watching scary movies.”