Physiological arousal was similar for both groups at the beginning of the first two sections of the movie and then diverged in the final three sections as the suspense increased. No explicit analysis was provided of the psychometric response to the film how much it was liked, how frightening it was, and so on. The study suggests that those who repress negative affect may nonetheless show high levels of physiological arousal during exposure to frightening films.
What is less clear in this study is the relationship between this phenomenon and enjoyment of the film. Despite being the most commonly accepted model of personality, the Big Five has been the focus of very little published research in the context of horror film enjoyment and consumption. The Big Five proposes that personality is comprised of five core traits along which individuals differ. There was a small but statistically significant and positive correlation between extraversion and frequency of horror media use, using horror media with others, enjoying horror media with others and being more scared with others.
Agreeableness was positively correlated with being easily scared by horror media, using horror media with others, enjoying horror media with others, and negatively correlated with being more scared with others.
People high in conscientiousness were less scared after using horror media, and people high in emotional stability were found to be less easily scared than those low in emotional stability, a finding which was also reported by Reynaud et al. The number of participants in Reynaud et al. The finding regarding agreeableness contrasts with research on violent video game playing where people lower in agreeableness have been found to be more frequent violent video games players; individuals who score high in extraversion and openness and low in neuroticism have also been found to be more frequent users Chory and Goodboy, Low agreeableness is a significant predictor of enjoyment of the horror film genre but not exclusively — it is also a significant predictor of enjoyment of parody, animation, neo-noir, and cult genres across different media including books, television, and film Cantador et al.
While the findings of Chory and Goodboy are informative, they are limited in terms of the measurement of response to horror film specifically because the stimuli used were not specifically horror film.
A similar limitation can be found in Clasen et al. The study also administered a variant of the Big Five personality inventory and a variant of the sensation-seeking scale Hoyle et al.
Although research on violent video games might help understand some of the correlates between use frequency and personality trait, it should be acknowledged that violent video games are qualitatively different stimuli to films. Films are a passive experience — viewers are unable to influence the action they see on screen — whereas gaming is specifically an active experience where the player engages with what they see and are expected to do so as this is the principal motivation for gaming.
Horror films and horror games are not equivalent stimuli, although they share many characteristics and elements of content. In conclusion, the literature studying the relationship between personality and horror film consumption has been limited in number and scope.
It is noteworthy that in one of the studies reporting an association, agreeableness was the only trait to be significantly associated with horror media use. This aspect of personality may be worth exploring further. Men enjoy horror media more than do women, are less scared by horror media, use horror media more, and show a greater preference for frightening horror media Clasen et al.
Men enjoyed the horror more and found it less boring and more satisfying and frightening than did women. Men expressed more distress if the female companion expressed distress but engaged more with them than with a masterful woman and less if the female companion was masterful.
Women engaged more with masterful than with distressed men. Cutting violence from films can increase enjoyability and decrease arousal in women but has no effect on men : women regard these films to be generally more disturbing than do men Berry et al.
Male undergraduates experience less distress and anxiety than do women when watching horror film Sparks, , and women find film clips depicting sadness and fear more unpleasant and distressing; they also show greater arousal to fear clips than to clips depicting compassion Davydov et al. The findings reflect a more general sex difference in that women, in general, report greater fear and anxiety than do men. Women have been found to express more fears, more severe fears, and greater fear of repulsive but harmless animals Tucker and Bond, , a finding that applies cross-culturally Arrindell et al.
Anxiety disorders are more commonly reported by women than men McLean and Anderson, , and women appear to be more susceptible to variety of anxiety-related disorders such as panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD, and agoraphobia Kessler et al. The exception to this pattern is fear of bodily injury, social stimuli, noise, or enclosed spaces, where no consistent sex differences have been reported McLean and Anderson, Disgust sensitivity — the degree to which individuals find stimuli repulsive — also tends to be higher in women, and this phenomenon might provide an explanation for the sex difference in the fear of animals — and horror film Connolly et al.
This is considered in more detail below. Women and girls, for example, are less likely to enjoy violent media when blood and gore portrayed are described as extreme, rather than mild or moderate Hoffner and Levine, The sex difference is not only reported in the horror genre but also across a number of cinematic genres.
In a second study, participants were asked to indicate the films they themselves preferred. In the first study, men were regarded as preferring action, adventure, erotic, fantasy, historical, horror, sci-fi, thriller, war, and western films, whereas women preferred animation, comedy, drama, heimat, and romantic films.
Both sexes liked crime and mystery equally. In the second study, women expressed a preference for drama and romance, and men preferred action, adventure, erotic, fantasy, horror, mystery, sci-fi, war, and Western films.
Animation, comedy, crime heist, history, and thrillers were liked by both sexes. Enjoyment and liking of the degree of explicit graphic horror also appear to show sex differences. Men tend to prefer very graphic horror material more than do women Hoffner and Levine, Men also report watching more violent television and attend more horror films.
Such an explanation is probably locked in a prison of its own time in the sense that it is unclear whether such attitudes still exist now, at the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century.
Tamborini et al. In one version, the victim of graphic violence was male; in the other, the victim was female. One theory of horror enjoyment discussed earlier the uses and gratification perspective; Rubin, argues that our reasons for watching horror and the benefit and gratification we derive from it will determine whether we identify with a victim or an aggressor Johnston, Viewers who identify with a female victim are usually more likely to experience distress Zillmann and Cantor, and are not satisfied by happy endings Tannenbaum and Gaer, However, the responses to men and women as victims in the film interacted with other viewing preferences.
Sensation seeking in general did not predict preference for graphic horror. Women regarded the films with female victims to be higher in violent content than films featuring male victims; the opposite pattern was found in men.
Boredom susceptibility was a good predictor of preference for graphic horror in men. No one factor was a strong predictor of graphic horror preference in women when the victim was male. Deceit and boredom susceptibility predicted graphic horror preference when the victim was female. Physiological arousal measured via GSR has also been correlated with enjoyment of horror after men finish watching a film Sparks, Men were younger when they watched the film Men gave more positive reactions than did women, and women gave more negative reactions than did men, and women reported more sleep disturbances than did men.
This study also measured empathy and found a positive correlation between overall empathy scale scores and negative reactions but not between negative reactions and any one specific subscale. There were some associations between negative reactions and empathetic responses. Low empathetic concern, for example, predicted sleep disturbance. Higher boredom susceptibility was associated with fewer negative reactions and with increased liking but not with sleep disturbance. Women who scored high on empathy were more likely to be scared at the time of the study i.
In a similar study, Hoekstra et al. The mean age at watching was Female participants as adults liked slasher films less than did male participants as adults — of the 14 categories included, this was the least liked by women. The most liked genre by women was romantic comedy; by men, action and adventure. Men reported choosing to watch horror more often than did women. Both sexes noted fear-related changes after watching films as children but not during the film, with women reporting more negative reactions during the watching of the films when they were girls.
The earlier their exposure to horror films as children, the greater was the sleeping disturbance they experienced afterward. The behavioral measures indicated the typical sex differences reported earlier: more girls than men hid their eyes 64 vs. In terms of the enjoyment of specific content, one study asked participants to rate a min horror film in which the sex of the victim and sexual content was manipulated Oliver, The context of this study concerned the types of victim and protagonist in slasher films.
An earlier content analysis of 10 slasher films found that a third of sex scenes concluded with the death of a character Weaver, Women, however, are not more likely to be killed. Women were more likely to be survivors, a cliche that has its own term in horror film: the Final Girl. More screen time is devoted to the deaths of women than men, however, and non-surviving women are more likely to be promiscuous, wear revealing clothes, appear nude, use sexual language, and undress and engage in sex when they are killed.
Non-surviving men appear to be identified only by their use of sexual language. Oliver found that sexual portrayals of victims were associated with increased viewer enjoyment, especially in men. These films were also regarded as more frightening.
Women in general report greater disgust sensitivity than do men. Disgust is a protective response to a direct threat to survival, such as contamination, lesions, sores, or disease Krusemark and Li, People high in disgust sensitivity show higher levels of disgust toward low, moderate, and severe facial disfigurement Shanmugarajah et al.
Individuals with anxiety disorders are more prone to be disgusted, especially those who are anxious about contagion Olatunji et al. People who are exposed to disease primes are more likely to judge themselves to be less extravert and open to experience Mortensen et al. This elevated sense of disgust sensitivity in women may partly explain why they enjoy horror film less than do men.
The literature on sex differences in response to, and preference for, horror film provides the most consistent finding in the field that men and boys prefer and enjoy horror film more than do girls and women. One possible explanation for this, besides differences in empathy, may lie in differences in higher-order traits such as anxiety proneness and disgust sensitivity.
This possibility, and the evidence for it, is discussed in a later section. Many of the studies reported are case studies, lacking in control participants and largely anecdotal. Bozzuto described four adults who developed abnormal stress behavior within a day of watching the film; participants reported insomnia, excitability, hyperactivity, irritability, and decreased appetite.
The symptoms dissipated after seven sessions of psychotherapy. Mathai reported the case of a distressed year-old boy who felt that when somebody touched him, they would go right through him and that when sitting on a chair, he would fall through it.
Five of the cases identified by Ballon and Leszcz cited The Exorcist as the cause of their distress. Robinson and Barnett reported the case of a year-old girl who had watched Jaws and experienced anxiety and sleep disturbances consequently. She was found the next day jerking her limbs, screaming about sharks. One study found that two year-old boys experienced anxiety for up to 8 weeks after watching the TV program Ghostwatch Simons and Silveira, Symptoms included fear of ghosts and of the dark, refusal to go upstairs alone, nightmares, sleeping with the light on, and panic attacks.
Individuals also held strong religious or cultural ideals, and their behavior included recalling imagery from the films they had seen.
The films also appeared to have some personal meaning to the individuals. Sparks a , b found that around half of the women and the quarter of the men surveyed in his study reported enduring fright after watching horror. Women appeared to be particularly affected Sparks et al.
While there is no evidence that exposure to horror films has adverse or sustained effects on mental health in individuals with no pre-existing mental health issue, there is evidence that watching horror films can lead to self-reported short-term anxiety and disturbed sleep. Children express fear to horror, just as adults do, and they also express enjoyment of horror and graphic violence, just as some adults do, and some have argued that this interest peaks at adolescence Twitchell, The form of the stimulus children fear appears to change as they develop, with unfamiliar or threatening versions of concrete objects the source of anxiety in infancy and imaginary and symbolic stimuli the source of fear in the pre-school years.
Fear stimuli become more concrete and realistic when children are at school age Hyson, Bauer found that drawings of imaginary feared objects decreased with age from kindergarten to age 11 or 12 , whereas depictions of realistic injury increased. Fright reactions occur to violence, injury, or physical danger Cantor and Wilson, Younger boys liked scary films more than did younger girls.
Cantor and Reilly found that 11—year olds reported avoiding frightening TV and films more than did 15—year olds, and Cantor et al. Having a television in the bedroom was the best predictor of fright severity, and the average age of exposure to stimuli was 6. Girls experienced more fear than did boys but fear in both sexes declined with age. Girls physically intervened and used social support and escape more than did boys. Cognitive reassurance was the most common coping strategy, and social support was the least common.
How children cope with horror has been the subject of some research on child development and horror because of the potentially harmful psychological consequences of exposure to frightening stimuli. Non-cognitive strategies were those which did not involve the processing of verbal information and which might involve desensitization the gradual exposure to the fear stimulus ; cognitive strategies were those whereby children were encouraged to think about the source of their fear as a means of coping with the stimulus.
There is evidence that desensitization is successful Wilson and Cantor, For example, children 5—7 and 8—9 year olds who had been gradually introduced to a videotape of snakes showed less fear when watching the snake pit scene from Raiders Of The Lost Ark. A similar effect was found in a study of 5—7- and 8—year olds in which participants played with a rubber tarantula and later saw a scene from Kingdom Of The Spiders Wilson, , and in a group of kindergarteners and 5—6-, 7—8-, and 6—9-year-old children who were exposed to photographs of worms and then saw a frightening film featuring worms.
The children who had been previously exposed to the creatures enjoyed the film more than did those not exposed; exposure to live worms reduced the fear evoked by the film in boys Weiss et al.
Here, Wes Craven the director of A Nightmare On Elm Street describes filming Robert Englund Freddy Krueger in Elm Street explaining that he was the actor who played a character so that the video could be sent to a distressed child who found Krueger very frightening.
The reasons for the success of this strategy might be the provision of relief from anxiety and the provision of tactile contact in linguistically developing children or by the occupation of working memory, which reduces the cognitive resources available to think about and process fear stimuli.
Proximity to a parent is perceived as being the most successful fear-reduction coping strategy in young children Wilson et al.
Very young children under 2 years experience less fear through covering their eyes; in 3—5-year olds, this behavior increases fear Wilson, Cognitive strategies, such as talking about films and programs with parents or other adults, have been found to be effective Cantor and Wilson, By far, the most common type of cognitive strategy employed by parents is reassuring children that the stimulus children are afraid of does not exist Cantor and Hoffner, , although this is likely to be successful in older children but not in younger children 4—5 years; Cantor and Wilson, Explaining that the source of fear is not likely to be harmful is also successful in older 8—9 year old children Wilson and Cantor, Verbal explanations may be ineffective in younger children who are less likely to discuss horror materials with their parents.
If children are informed that a film has a happy ending, they report less fear Hoffner and Cantor, ; Hoffner, If children rehearse verbal information e. Children also regard the spiders as less dangerous after being given these instructions. Two physical means of coping with frightening stimuli studied in children are blunting avoiding threat or transforming a threat by distraction; looking away, for example and monitoring being action oriented and attending to the threat.
Sparks and Spirek found that high blunters and low monitors were less physiologically aroused by horror films than were high monitors and low blunters suggesting that underlying physiology might predict or predispose individuals to react in a given emotional way to frightening stimuli; Sparks a , b also found that low monitors were less negative about horror when given information about the film but this information had no effect on blunters.
A study of 14— and 15—year olds examined the role of blunting and monitoring on coping with scary films Hoffner, Davis and Kraus had previously reported that high empathetic concern was associated with less loneliness and unsociability; high personal distress was associated with shyness, poor interpersonal functioning, and social anxiety.
Empathetic concern was found to encourage altruism, whereas personal distress prompted people to reduce their own emotion expression Batson, Hoffner found a series of interesting results. A belief that something was unreal was the most common coping strategy, followed by interpersonal comfort and momentary avoidance; these were used more than was distraction.
The study found that boys preferred scary films more than did girls, a finding consistent with the literature, that girls reported more empathetic concern and personal distress, that personal distress correlated with empathy and with monitoring and blunting, that these correlated negatively with liking for scary films, that blunting predicted use of distraction and unreality, that monitoring was more widely used and was more effective, that monitoring and blunting were associated with increased interpersonal comfort, that girls were more likely to use momentary avoidance and interpersonal comfort and consider them more effective, that people who reported using one strategy were more likely to use all four, that empathy, but not personal distress, was associated with greater use of reality, IC and personal distress were associated with increased use of distraction, and that higher empathy scores were associated with greater use of Unreality.
People who liked horror were less likely to use distraction, unreality, and momentary avoidance as coping strategies, which suggest that coping is related to the dislike of horror — it is something that must be done to mitigate the effects of something that is disliked. If people thought the coping strategies worked, they enjoyed the films more. Hoffner also noted that participants who reported finding scary films and television to be violent were likely to use all four coping mechanisms; those who found the material to be realistic were more likely to report using distraction, unreality, and interpersonal comfort as coping mechanisms.
Material featuring blood and gore was more likely to lead to the use of momentary avoidance. Girls reported using momentary avoidance and interpersonal comfort more than did boys and considered these to be more effective strategies than did boys. As children enter adolescence, their reasons for seeking out horror develop and change — they will watch to be thrilled, to rebel because parents have prohibited them , or to enjoy gore because they are interested in how people die Oliver, a , b.
One study of 13—year-old boys and girls examined their motivation for watching slasher movies Johnston, Reasons for watching included gore watching, thrill watching, an increased feeling of independence bravery, and problem avoidance.
Thrill watching and independence were positively related to positive affect; positive views of slashers were associated with high gore and thrill watching and gore watching predicted preference for graphic violence. Boys were more likely to watch graphic horror because they were motivated to seek out gore, and they were also more likely to identify with the killer than were girls; girls were more likely to identify with the victim.
A larger survey of 6, 10—year-old US adolescents in found similar sex differences: watching violent films was associated with being male, older, non-white, having less educated parents, and having poor school achievement Worth et al.
Both boys and girls who found violent cartoons funny and thrilling also scored higher on neuroticism, psychoticism, and sensation seeking. The majority of the research on the development of horror preference and response to horror film has recruited children and adolescents as participants. There is some, but not much, research on how older people respond to horror, and this suggests that the preference for horror declines with age Tamborini and Stiff, ; Hoffner and Levine, Clasen et al.
As Clasen et al. The average age of those who agreed that they strongly liked horror media was slightly lower than those who disagreed They also note that since sensation seeking also declines with age, this might explain the reduction in enjoyment and seeking out of horror with increasing age post adolescence. Children tend to express greater fear to different types of stimuli and content depending on the age of the child.
There are also differences between boys and girls and between age groups in the types of coping strategies they adopt during and after watching frightening television and film material.
One of the principal purposes of horror film is to induce fear. The nature of fear and its etiology has a long history in psychology, and various models have been proposed, which have attempted to explain why we become afraid and to what types of stimulus. The module has four features: it is selective, it is automatic when encountering fear-relevant stimuli, it responds without mediation , it is encapsulated i.
It is considered to be an adaptive mechanism for allowing us to avoid physical danger rapidly Schaller and Neuberg, In the context of horror film, this is, of course, counter-intuitive as horror film viewers who enjoy horror may not wish to escape the horror and deliberately and proactively approach and seek it, and those that do not enjoy horror and who may serendipitously watch horror engage in other withdrawal behaviors such as shutting the eyes or holding on to a companion they may also leave a cinema or turn off a screen.
The questions that then arise are whether there are specific stimuli or situations, which horror films deploy or recruit which are more likely to induce a fear response and, if so, what are these stimuli and why do they have this effect. The latter stimuli pose no immediate and real physical threat to survival i. These stimuli and situations were those which once posed threats to our ancestors and that we, therefore, developed an evolutionary disposition to avoid or to respond with fear, a form of selective association.
Guns, for example, are not fatal unless used, and our exposure to them is limited; guns are not phobic stimuli and seeing photographs of guns — or seeing guns — does not elicit significant fear, and not the degree of fear that stimuli to which we are evolutionarily predisposed to fear evoke. A person pointing a gun at us, however, with the intention to fire or with the threat of the intention to fire is clearly a direct threat but not one that is evolutionarily created.
One of most common phobias is arachnophobia, and spiders have been a staple of horror films since the s, although only 0. This predisposition facilitates vigilance occasionally, over-vigilance and we see threat in ambiguous situations to sources of threat or danger with greater attention paid to some stimuli Clasen, ; March et al. It is a self-protection and survival-enabling mechanism motivating us to confront and, therefore, remove the potential source of threat or flee thereby, removing us from the context in which a threat could result in endangerment.
Fear is related to expressions of disgust, and the literature on phobia suggests that the strength of fear for phobic objects is closely related to disgust sensitivity but not trait anxiety Davey, such that people who express abnormal fear of an object also show high degrees of sensitivity to disgusting stimuli but are not dispositionally, highly anxious.
A specific phobia, which appears to be qualitatively and quantitatively different from others and is relevant in the context of horror film, is the fear of blood or blood-injection-injury phobia Wani et al.
Individuals experience fear, anxiety, and disgust and avoid or decline medical treatment because of the strength of their phobic reaction Wani et al. This extreme experience may explain why some people feel squeamish at the sight of blood in horror: blood is unique as a stimulus, which evokes a strong fear or disgust reaction.
Fear is the most widely studied emotion in science because it can be easily conditioned, studied, and observed in non-human organisms. There is a substantial literature, which has attempted to explain fear conditioning and learning through reference to its underlying neuropsychology, and much of this work has been conducted on non-human species LeDoux and Hofmann, In humans, much of our understanding of the neurology of fear has derived from neuroimaging research and studies of brain injury.
One of the brain regions involved in fear recognition and experience is the amygdala Martin, ; March et al. No study has specifically examined the effect of exposure to horror film on brain activation, although hundreds of studies have examined the effect of exposure of fear-related stimuli, including films designed to induce fear, on brain activation measured via MEG, PET, fMRI, and EEG. Many studies have examined the consequence of brain injury on the fear response, and one study is especially relevant to horror film as it examined the effect of bilateral amygdala injury on responses to fear-related stimuli in a film-related context Feinstein et al.
In this study, a year-old woman with normal IQ and language showed impaired fear conditioning, impaired recognition of fear in faces, and impaired social-related fear. Feinstein et al. Although she verbally indicated avoidance of the spiders she physically approached them and asked 15 times if she could touch one; at the haunted house a visitor attraction , she volunteered to lead a group of visitors, did not hesitate in walking around, and was not scared by the monsters she scared the actors.
None of the 10 horror film clips elicited fear other film clips designed to elicit other emotions successfully elicited those emotions and she asked for the name of one so that she could rent it.
She recognized that most people would be scared by them. This is only comprehensive study of the effect of region-relevant brain injury on the perception of horror films and horror-related stimuli in a single-case study, and while single case studies need to be interpreted cautiously, the study does provide the opening for other studies to confirm the role of these structures in horror appreciation.
One possible extension of this study would be to examine whether amygdala reactivity is associated with enjoyment of horror film those with highly reactive amygdalae may fear or enjoy horror more than those with less reactive amygdalae or whether the amygdala becomes increasingly active with greater stimulation, and the intensity of the experience correlates with the increase in activity while watching.
The current review sought to determine why people watch horror film and how exposure to horror film affects behavior. The conclusions in the previous paragraph are based on a very limited set of data. The studies from which such data have been drawn have varied in sample size, methodology, and materials, and these are three clearly identifiable and major limitations in this field.
Hoffner and Levine have highlighted similar limitations in their meta-analysis. Studies have used a variety — although a very restricted variety — of horror films over 30 years of research, and the films share little in common apart from being classed as horror film.
The Silence of the Lambs, Cannibal Holocaust, The Babadook, Saw, The Blair Witch Project, Psycho, Dracula , and The Devil Rides Out are all horror films, but each has distinctive mechanisms of evoking fear and disgust based on story, film making, plot, characters, sound, performance, visual effects, credibility, and use of music. No one study can fully take into account our response to horror because not all horror films are the same Oliver, a , b , and this limitation needs to be more clearly recognized and addressed in future work.
Hoffner and Levine have concluded that the nature of the media content in these studies can explain the failure to find homogeneity in the correlations between enjoyment of horror media and empathic concern in their meta-analysis. As noted earlier, when correlations were found for empathy and horror enjoyment, the most consistent correlations found were in those studies in which victimization formed the dominant aspect of the horror stimuli. When these studies were removed, the correlations for the remaining studies fell to almost zero.
The former limitation can be easily resolved via empirical research. This is not to say that some of these elements have not been studied — this review and others have described studies in which they have — but there has been little research which has examined these elements systematically and methodically, and some elements have not been explored at all. It is possible to study non-verbal measures such as movement, EEG, brain activation, GSR, and so on , but these are indirect, correlational measures of what an individual might be thinking or feeling.
Motor behavior, however, may be a very informative indicator of response to horror, as some of the studies reviewed here suggest. Horror movies are somewhat of a right of passage when it comes to dating - and for good reason. Research suggests horror movies can make the perfect setting for a date. Designed to elicit an arousal response, horror films can cause us to experience a mixture of physiological responses that we can confuse for something more positive - often leading us to confuse our physiological response of fear with that of attraction or arousal.
Between jump scares, atmospheric music scores, fast-paced imagery, and an often underlying fear of the unknown, horror films are designed to elicit responses from us. Through watching horror films together, we can also feel more connected with those we are watching with. His research revealed that men paired with female partners enjoyed horror clips twice as much when the woman showed distress during the course of the film, whilst women enjoyed the film more if their male companion remained calm or showed courage.
What is it about horror movies that you enjoy? Share with us in the comments below. Would you like to contribute to happiful? Get in touch. Pulse racing, heart pounding. You lay awake, your thoughts racing. Sigmund Freud provides us with three possible explanations for why we experience things that behave abnormally as intimidating:. We nowadays live in an enlightened time, but thoughts like "what if there actually are ghosts" create excitement.
As such, seeking this kind of experiences may be a kind of logical reality-check. Such experiences may evoke different types of repressed complexes or ideas that we may wish to process. Freud claims that most people are never completely freed from "infantile anxiety," that is, fear of darkness, loneliness and silence. He provides no direct explanation as to why we would wish to seek out something that reminds us of such infantile anxiety, but it could be related to curiosity.
These consist of comedy, melodrama, and thriller — or horror film," says film scholar Birkvad. All of the above appeal to basic feelings in us like humour, empathy, discomfort or excitement.
In addition, there are porn films, which aim to evoke sexual arousal. The term refers to how everyday situations, or objects, suddenly seem to be ruled by unknown forces.
The horror film is one of the oldest film genres. Dating back to the silent film period of the previous turn of the century, we have been dreadfully delighted with this particular type of film. Monica Jimenez can be reached at monica. Skip to main content. Malcolm Turvey, director of the Film and Media Studies program, explains the attraction to the dark side. Photo: Kelvin Ma. By Monica Jimenez. October 30, June 28,
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