Fear of horror movies?

Post Reply New Topic

I was just wondering if anyone is like this. I have been afraid of them for as long as I can remember. Most people don't understand how I can be afraid of them when they aren't real. It's actually much more complex than that. It even got frightened by the titanic wreckage.

I'm not really sure why but its just something in my mind that freaks beyond measure about horror movies of all kinds. It's so bad that I could go weeks or more without even sleeping. I wonder if its because my mind is so obsessed with what happened that it can't comprehend reality from the movie... maybe?

Anyway, anyone else like this?

I enjoy horror movies. Watching them is like a psychological thriller for me.

I do get unnerved by excessive violence, though.

My heart just beats harder during horror movies.

I have some problems with them to a degree. The sudden loud noises are obviously an issue and when the suspense is drawn out just the right amount, it gets hard to bear. I do have my ways of getting around them however:
-For the loud noises, I play the movie with the volume low or off altogether while relying on the subtitles or captions for dialogue. Naturally, you can't do this in a theater, so I stick with watching horror films in the privacy of home only.
-If a suspenseful scene is getting too much (or too long) to bear, I just fast-forward through it. One of the blessings of digital recordings (DVRs, DVDs, streaming movies) is being able to control the speed of the fast-forwarding and being able to rewind back on a dime if you miss your mark.
-I always watch horror films with plenty of time left between then and bedtime, usually a couple of hours from the end of the film.
-I have an Associates Degree in Film Analysis, so I'm able to separate myself at will from the film in regards to the violence and the story to look at it without getting caught up in it. I understand that not everyone can do this (get the degree or not get caught up), so I'd recommend doing some spoiler-free reading up on the film before watching it. Reviews, trivia, and parental warnings are good sources of spoiler-free info about films.

I can't really experience fear unless I'm being faced with an immediate threat to my safety and/or security, or if something threatens my loved ones. I know that anything that happens behind the TV screen cannot get me (and the characters in horror movies tend to be unsympathetic). Slasher movies are like slapstick comedy, for me.

On the other hand, it is very easy for me to feel repulsed by images in a movie, book or television show--especially if the images are not staged (like a video of a kid that broke his leg on a trampoline, and had the bone poke through his skin). This can occur from watching a movie that depicts prolonged pain (Hostel), gross-out comedy (the closest I ever came to vomiting while watching a movie was when Chris Ponteas drank the horse semen in Jackass 2) or pornography. The worst stuff is that which depicts violence against children, sexual violence or sadism.

Also, seeing something that appears unnatural can seem very unnerving, to me. There's this hypothesis known as the Uncanny Valley, originally applied to the field of robotics, which proposes that as robots started to appear more like humans, our capacity to empathize with them would increase only up to a certain point, where they might appear human but at the same time not human enough, eliciting revulsion. This hypothesis is now applied to other scenarios such as genetic engineering. A moving corpse is considered to be the most revolting thing to the human mind (placed at the bottom of the uncanny valley). So there are some movies where the visual effects can elicit a disturbance in myself--namely those that utilize clanky stop-motion puppets as opposed to CGI (David Cronenberg's The Fly, The Thing, The Howling). These days, CGI animators try to capture too much detail in their creations, like every blink of an eye or twitch of a nose, which appears too natural to be scary. On the other hand, the creature that Jeff Goldblum transforms into at the end of The Fly moved in a stiff and clumsy manner, and you can still tell it was made of rubber, but it's those unnatural qualities that make it far scarier than the CGI monsters we have today.

What about the Steve-O outhouse scene in Jackass 3?

I love horror movies/novels and the endorphin boost that they give me. It's hard to explain why exactly, but seeing fictional danger and death helps me to appreciate safety and life.
Now, romantic comedies... THOSE scare me.

I find horror movies boring and predictable usually, and sometimes the use of gross out gore is way too excessive and becomes a bit ridiculous.

Alot of people enjoy being fake-scared. That's why roller coaster rides make so much money, and that's why there are so many horror films. Obviously you don't like being scared, even if you know it's fake.

I speculate in many people the cerebral cortex will instruct the more primitive cerebral fear center (the limbic system) to override further negative emotion. The cerebral cortex is responsible for conscious thought, so that's the region of the brain that "knows" how to separate fact from make-believe. Maybe you don't have this type of communication between the two layers of your brain. If you've ever noticed, animals with less-developed cerebral cortices act more on autonomic "fight/flight" and less on conscious rational thought. Obviously humans have a more developed brain, so those that scare easily would have deficient communication; because you know that it's not real, but that message isn't being conveyed to your fear center. That's my reasoning, it may be wrong because I only have a rudimentary knowledge of the brain. Someone please correct me if they know more than I.

I don't like horror movies mostly because of the suspense. I can't deal with suspense. I always have to leave the room whenever anything starts to look like it's going to get real bad, real fast, or some kind of suspenseful music starts playing. I find this happens a lot in horror movies, and I just can't deal with it.

Horror movies are so not scary that I laugh when I watch them. Especially during the scenes that are supposed to startle the viewer. I also have a habit of pointing out ways in which horror movies are totally fake and unrealistic (even if they're supposed to be).

Snark it is awesome. The previews should tell you what is going on.

I don't watch them, too scary
Or at least they were as a kid and teenager... Maybe I could handle them better now, but I don't see the point watching that.