Boo.
Let's talk about scary movies. For most of my life, I hated them. As a cinephile, this felt like a blind spot, but it was one I defended fiercely. Horror was vulgar, simplistic, and designed to provoke cheap thrills. I would disguise my avoidance in snobbery, looking down on the genre in favour of things critics approved of.
The truth is, I just couldn't handle it.
My own difficult childhood left me with a nervous system in a constant state of high alert. Horror movies didn't feel like entertainment; they felt like a re-enactment. The suspense, the claustrophobia, the menace — they were all too familiar, too close to home. An experience that might be a level-five thrill for someone else was a level-100 overload for me. I learned that horror movies were simply not for me.
Then, last year, something changed.
I was on a Reddit cinema community, and users were discussing the "ugliest looking films they'd ever seen." The top comment, praised by dozens, was for the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre from 1974. People weren't insulting it; they were celebrating it as an aesthetic masterpiece precisely because of its ugliness. They described how the cheap 16mm film, the washed-out colours, and the oppressive sound design created a mood of pure, unrelenting dread.
My curiosity as a film lover finally outweighed my fear. I prepared myself. I waited for a safe moment, in the middle of a sunlit day, and I watched it.
The experience was revelatory. Not only did I appreciate the artistry, but I was scared, and I actually enjoyed the feeling. The tension and unpredictability were glorious. It was cathartic and fun. It seemed that after years of therapy and working on my own nervous system, I was finally able to experience the roller-coaster ride of a horror film without it triggering a total shutdown.
A younger version of myself would have asked, "What is the enjoyment in watching sadism on screen?" It's a fair question.
Horror is a Rorschach test; people project different meanings onto it. While some may watch for the violence itself, for me, the value lies in everything happening around the violence. Horror is one of the few genres that explores, with brutal honesty, how ordinary people respond to extraordinary threats.
It explores how people ignore their gut instincts.
It examines what survival mechanisms kick in under extreme pressure.
Most importantly, it tells stories of endurance. The narrative arc of a horror character is often a journey from victim to survivor.
Even the violence itself can be argued to be more morally justifiable than in other genres. A film like Rambo presents violence as cartoonish and without consequence. Horror, by contrast, shows that violence has a real, devastating impact. It doesn't shy away from the aftermath.
Perhaps the most compelling argument for horror is its unique ability to tackle subjects other genres can't. A family drama, for instance, is often constrained by the need for narrative sense, likable characters, and a neat resolution.
Horror has only one constraint: it must make the audience feel something powerful — disgust, revulsion, fear.
This freedom allows it to explore the raw, messy, and often unresolved realities of human experience. Take a film like Coralie Fargeat's The Substance. It's a visceral, gut-wrenching exploration of societal beauty standards and the self-violence women inflict upon themselves. To tell that story as a traditional drama would be to dilute its power. Horror allows the film to make you feel the psychological horror, not just observe it.
I see this constantly in modern horror, especially in films created by women. Prano Bailey-Bond's Censor and Pascal Laugier's Incident in a Ghostland are two brilliant films that explore the dissociative nature of trauma. They are abstract, sometimes confusing, but if you watch them through a trauma-informed lens, they make a terrifying and profound kind of sense.
They create a mirror for the parts of life we can't speak about in polite conversation — the nightmares we carry, the pain we think no one else sees. There is an irony that the very trauma that made it impossible for me to watch these films is often what inspires their creators.
If, like me, you once wrote off horror because it felt too intense, I invite you to gently revisit it. You might find a genre full of stories that speak to your own life experiences in a surprisingly powerful and, paradoxically, healing way.
Here are a few to get you started:
Martyrs (2008): A French film that is a high-impact, and very difficult, exploration of trauma. (Extreme trigger warning)
Presence (2024): A quiet, spooky, and masterfully shot family drama from Steven Soderberg.
Hellraiser (1987) and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988): Two classics from Clive Barker that are less about demons and more about the line between desire and destruction.
Happy watching. I hope you find something that gets in your guts, in the best possible way.
What happens when we step outside the culture we were raised in? Between Worlds: Reflections on Culture, Identity, and Living Abroad is a five-part series exploring how life abroad reshapes our sense of self, belonging, and how we relate to others.
If you've just returned from studying abroad, how are you? No, really. How are you doing?
What happens when we step outside the culture we were raised in? Between Worlds: Reflections on Culture, Identity, and Living Abroad is a five-part series exploring how life abroad reshapes our sense of self, belonging, and how we relate to others.