Why Do We Love Being Scared?

Since the pandemic came about in 2020, we’ve seen the cultural dominance of the horror genre in film and TV. Last year, the genre gained 13% market share of the box office, the highest it’s been at since 1995, and higher than any other genre. It comes in all different styles and formats, from sequels to famous horror movies like Orphan: First Kill and The Forever Purge, to remakes of old classics like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, to revamped Brit-horror like Last Night in Soho, political horror like Nope and Candyman, psychological suspense like Don’t Worry Darling, dystopias like the Handmaid’s Tale, sci-fi horror Stranger Things, the five hundred true crime movies, TV shows and podcasts that came out this year, and far far more.

And we’re not just consuming more horror-based media, it’s trending online as well. Since 2020, views of Reddit threads r/Horror, r/ParanormalEncounters and r/HighStrangeness have doubled. What is it about post-COVID life that makes us crave horror so much?

So what? (Or rather, why?)

Comfort

There’s a paradoxical comfort in being scared. When the pandemic hit, reality was essentially straight out of a horror movie, terrifying, lonely, and above all, inescapable. Crucially, horror movies provoke the same terrifying shivers down your spine, but with the safety of a screen separating us from that. When we’re watching Freddy Krueger stalk down Elm Street in hunt of a new victim, we know that that victim could never be us, our families or loved ones. We can lose ourselves in all the joys of our fight-or-flight response (heightened emotions, thrills, adrenaline), all whilst knowing that we’re in complete control over the situation and there are no real-life consequences. Horror gives us the comfort of a safe space in which to examine and challenge our real-life fears.

Ultimately, forcing ourselves to confront and overcome fears, even in a safe space, feels like a victory for ourselves. When our entire lives are taken out of our own control during, for example, a lockdown, winning those small battles is a comforting point of self-sovereignty.

Coping

On top of that, horror movies and TV, like most forms of storytelling, come to an end. Usually, the serial killer is felled, the zombie apocalypse is cured, the family keeps living in the suspiciously old and creaky house (perhaps unwisely, given how many Paranormal Activity sequels there are). At a time like COVID, when we’re experiencing uncertainty about every facet of our lives at every second of the day, it’s a relief to watch the resolution we want in our real lives happen on screen. And even if there is no resolution, if Chucky opens his eyes again at the end of the movie, or Jason’s body mysteriously disappears as the credits cut, then it helps us normalise the fact that real life has no definitive ending. For a lot of viewers, there’s closure in watching the ‘big bad’ be vanquished.

One way of looking at it is almost like it’s a form of aversion therapy. Being exposed to a trigger in a safe environment can help us cope better when we come across it in the real world. Through that lens, horror is essentially a training ground for dealing with fear and anxiety, a bootcamp for stress. In fact, horror-fans were shown to have dealt with the pandemic better than the average person.

Recognition

Horror, like all entertainment and media, serves to hold a mirror up to society. Our lived experiences shape culture, and culture shapes our lived experiences. In a post-COVID time, our lived experiences are often made up of crisis, anxiety, and fear. Horror is the perfect medium to reflect this back at us through. And it’s not the first time it’s doing this either. Horror has always been a vehicle for metaphors about our worst anxieties about society. It has the power to turn our fears into tangible threats in a way that few other genres are capable of doing, without being too literal and confrontational.

Initially, the genre took off after the Great Depression, with the golden age of monster movies. At a time when people felt that their lives were miserable and out of their control, monsters were a great allegory for the unknown that was to blame. The early Cold War period brought a slew of movies about the consequences of radioactive waste (think Godzilla, 1954), the red scare brought horror about invading forces (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956), the war on terror introduced ‘torture porn’ (Saw, 2004). Perhaps the most famous example is The Night of the Living Dead (1968), as an allegory for rising racial tensions in the US. More recently, we’ve seen Get Out (2017), and really any movie by Jordan Peele, reflect post-racial society.

With a genre that has such a rich history of reflecting societal tensions back at us in a digestible and, literally, inconsequential way, it’s no surprise that it has become the perfect medium through which to process the feeling of permanent DEFCON-3.

Since the pandemic ended, we’ve not yet managed to escape the feeling of permanent crisis. Politically, the UK is going from low to low; the UN publishes a new report about the dangers of climate changes seemingly every week; society feels more divided than ever and our freedoms are under attack. With this in mind, it’s unlikely that the horror boom we’re seeing now will let up any time soon.

As an organisation, it’s worth thinking about how you can tap into this cultural zeitgeist. For a good example of a brand that’s mastered gory imagery in its campaigns, check out our profile of Liquid Death’s marketing strategy here.