Thinking About Terror: Why Does Horror Scare?

Every October I feel as if the obligated to watch horror films. Like watching It's A Wonderful Life around Christmas it becomes a yearly tradition. Growing up I had a huge aversion to horror, brought on by one too many nights spent staying up past my bed time to watch Ernest: Scared Stupid. Now I go back and look at the films I was terrified of as a child and they seem silly, yet as I grew older and started watching more types of films I have still avoided horror. This is particularly odd to me as one of my favorite writers, Edgar Allan Poe, is always associated with the genre. In an attempt to combat my hesitancy to embrace these films I even decided to watch all four of the Scream movies earlier in the year. I even went to my local theater to see The Shining when it played a week ago. After this brief confrontation with some notable entries in the scary movie oeuvre, I was left with one nagging question in the back of my mind: do horror films need to be scary?

The short answer to this question would be a simple yes. I don't mean to imply that they only are meant to scare, there is a ton of artistic quality in this art form in craft, theme, and pathos. However, most people even use the terms 'horror film' and 'scary movie' interchangeably. But while watching The Shining I did not find myself nearly as scared as I did when I was watching Scream. I may even say that I didn't feel scared at all. Certainly not in the same way. And  that's really where I find horror films incredibly interesting. Much like comedy, horror is such an umbrella term that it can encompass so many different types of movies. Using my limited knowledge of these kinds of movies, I want to take a look at exactly how these movies scare.

Taking on 2010 - Film Rankings

And with the end of the Oscars I can probably close the book on 2010 in film. Did not hit 100, as I had hoped, but below are all the films I've seen ranked and in order from best to worst. Here's hoping that 2011 is even better! Also, sorry for the formatting inconsistencies, I could not figure out what was going wrong, so it looks sort of sloppy and uneven, but the rankings are there and they all correspond numerically.

Great (1-12)

Summer Wars

Black Swan

The Social Network

True Grit

Somewhere

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Runaway

Mother

Cyrus

Plastic Bag

The Life of the World to Come

The Illusionist

Good (13-45)

Winter’s Bone

Blue Valentine

Dogtooth

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?

I’m Still Here

It’s Kind of A Funny Story

4.3.2.1

A Town Called Panic

The Secret of Kells

Rabbit Hole

Machete

The White Ribbon

Greenberg

Remember Me

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Ramona and Beezus

MacGruber

Mystery Team

Another Year

Afterschool

I Am Love

Despicable Me

I’m Here

My Dog Tulip

Mary and Max

Splice

Charlie St. Cloud

Shutter Island

A Prophet

Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl

The Secret in their Eyes

TRON: Legacy

127 Hours

Mediocre (46-84)

Four Lions

Easy A

Let Me In

Animal Kingdom

Exit Through the Gift Shop

The Winning Season

Catfish

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

Get Him to the Greek

Youth in Revolt

Twelve

FISH TANK

Never Let Me Go

Micmacs

The White Stripes: Under the Great Northern Lights

Alice in Wonderland

Batman: Under the Red Hood

Valentine’s Day

Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam

I Love You, Phillip Morris

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

FRED: The Movie

The Kids Are All Right

Avalon High

Kick-Ass

The Last Song

I Am Comic

The Fighter

The Town

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

Solitary Man

Holy Rollers

Victorious: Freak the Freak Out

Starstruck

iPsycho

Iron Man 2

16 Wishes

Restrepo

The King’s Speech

Bad (85-92)

Tooth Fairy

The Book of Eli

Inception

Den Brother

City Island

She’s Out of My League

Toy Story 3

The Cartel

Terrible (93-94)

Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars

How to Train Your Dragon