It was a typical Friday night on Maynard Street. 
My roommate and I had just finished up with 
a week of online classes from within our sublet 
apartment. Still in the heart of the pandemic, 
we acquired it immediately after University of 
Michigan President Mark Schlissel notified us 
that the dorms would be changing to single-
occupancy residency.

Our freshman year of college had so far been 

tumultuous, unpredictable, suffocating and 
monotonous all at once. We were always on our 
toes, waiting for the next bad thing to happen, 
while simultaneously exhausted by staring at the 
same four walls day-in, day-out. 

Plagued by our boredom, we began a tradition 

that would ground us while simultaneously 
exciting us, drawing us out of our repetitive 
routine and allowing us to escape our less-than-
perfect circumstances.

Every Friday night, my roommate and I 

immersed ourselves in horror movies.

We began the tradition in the dorms the night 

before Halloween and brought our obsession 
with us into the winter semester. We had both 
loved horror movies before college, yet the 
stimulation of watching these films became more 
of a restorative experience in 2020 rather than 
mindless entertainment. It was an escape from 
reality, a controlled, thrilling environment that 
captivated us.

My fascination with horror grew exponentially 

throughout my COVID-19 freshman year. Each 
day I listened to true crime and fantastical horror 
podcasts while washing dishes or working out. 
I binge-watched every season of “American 
Horror Story” while falling asleep. My constant 
engagement with the horror genre made me 
progressively more desensitized to the content 
of the stories; at this point, it takes an incredibly 

creative director or writer to get a genuine 

fearful 
reaction 
from 
me. 
My 

roommate and I are always 

searching for a film 

that 

will truly scare us to the core, a narrative that 
will shock us out of the real world and leave us 
haunted. 

Some might find this almost therapeutic 

perception of horror strange, or even disturbing. 
Horror movies allow me to focus on someone 
else’s world. In a strange way, their tragic 
circumstances 
make 
our 
own 
real-world 

problems seem manageable. But though there 
are numerous die-hard horror fans, others see 
no appeal in voluntarily igniting feelings of fear, 
disgust or dread. Why do some love this rush of 
adrenaline, while others avoid it at all costs? Why 
do certain individuals have such a high threshold 
of fear that even the most gruesome films elicit no 
reaction?

The Halloween season forces us to reflect on 

these questions and the curiosity surrounding 
fear as a whole. The fact that we allot a whole 
month to the concept of “spookiness” and horror 
certainly indicates a collective attraction to the 
idea of fright. Going into October, I wanted to 
understand this allure of the eerie, the creepy and 
the ghastly that movies present to us. Whether we 
like it or not, horror surrounds us during the fall, 
and horror films are ever an essential component 
of this spine-chilling period. 
D

issecting a Horror Movie

Horror movies are characterized 

by their ability to create an ambiance 

of uncertainty, eliciting feelings of suspense, 
disgust, shock or terror. According to AMC, 
horror capitalizes on “whatever dark, primitive, 
and revolting traits that simultaneously attract 
and repel us,” tapping into the twisted allure of 
unthinkably heinous circumstances. Viewers are 
drawn in by a collective fascination with brutality 
and a peculiar gratification that they are not 
experiencing similar atrocity in their own lives. 

The human interest in the macabre is not 

new. Horror has been around for centuries, 
evidenced by the more morbid stories from 
folklore or popular 19th-century gothic novels 
from Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley. Directors 
have been producing films that cater to this 

feeling of terror almost since 

the beginning of the movie 
industry. Since then, horror 
has developed into eight 
different 
sub-genres 
— 

psychological, slasher, gore, 
body horror, found footage, 
monster, paranormal and 
comedy — that approach 
the category from a distinct 
perspective. 
The 
movies 

amplify different types of 
fears so each consumer can 
obtain a thrilling experience 
fitting to their idea of what’s 
terrifying. 

This is what makes my 

horror-going 
experiences 

so intriguing. Whether I 

wish to experience a succession 

of quick jump scares or evoke a lasting 
psychological paranoia, horror has the 
capacity to cater to whatever effect I 
want to incite.

The diversity of the genre also makes 

it a unique tool for artistic expression. 
Horror explores the most appalling 

parts of humanity, the roots of our fears and 
worries, and reflects the state of society. Take 
the example of the U.S. in the 1970s: Serial killer 
murder rates were the highest they’d ever been in 
the country’s history. Not coincidentally, slasher 
films became a cinematic staple, presenting 
viewers with a heightened production of the 
reality they were living in. Jordan Peele’s 2017 
film “Get Out” explores the deep roots of racism in 
America while social justice movements became 
more visible in real-life mainstream media. The 
visual effects of horror thrills audiences, but 
witnessing a twisted version of the issues of one’s 
own world is what’s truly terrifying.

Mark Kligerman, a lecturer in the LSA 

Department of Film, Television and Media, 
emphasized the importance of this cultural 
component of horror.

“Each time I revisit the genre in the classroom, 

I ask students to tease out relationships between 
horror movies and the broader system of values 
that form the basis of culture, both domestically 
and internationally,” Kligerman said.

Kligerman also urges students to, “focus on the 

fluidity of the form” of horror, paying attention 
to how directors adapt their films over time to 
reflect current society.

“The original ‘Halloween,’ for example, 

premiered in 1978, yet Hollywood has produced 
countless sequels, remakes and knockoffs 
since then,” Kligerman said. “Though the film 
certainly belongs to the same genre as the 
original superficially, its attitudes toward politics, 
violence, sexuality and even monstrosity are 
much different, alerting us to the very dynamic 
and unstable nature of horror. Recognizing and 
delving into this instability with students is when 
discussions of the form become really interesting.”

Kligerman highlighted the revealing nature 

of horror films, whether in the U.S. or abroad. 
These movies, he explained, spotlight the central 
issues and philosophies of each culture in a more 
poignant manner than other genres.

“I do tend to stress the importance of cultural 

specificity when teaching horror,” Kligerman said. 
He cited Vanderbilt professor Teresa A. Goddu, who 
he says argues “that the gothic narrative in early 
American literature was a resistant cultural form 
that unsettled myths of New World innocence by 
revealing the darkness at the heart of the American 
civilizing process: the trans-Atlantic slave trade 
and the legacy of racial exploitation and exclusion 
have formed the basis of a living nightmare that has 
haunted American culture for centuries and from 
which we have yet to awaken.”

Diving into the world of horror films with my 

roommate was simultaneously an act of escapism 
and an ongoing education on the history of the 
world around us. Sexism, health, violence, racism, 
family and mental health — we explored all of 
these issues in horror while they reached a fever 
pitch in the events and movements occurring 
outside of our apartment walls. 

We immersed ourselves in fantastic tales that 

magnified the problems of disease, environmental 
collapse and political division plaguing our world. 
Through film, the issues were easier to absorb, 
allowing us to examine their truths as outsiders to 
the unfolding events. While the sensational effects 
of horror were upfront and at times extreme, we 
internalized themes that addressed some of the 
largest and darkest issues haunting humankind.

F

ear and How We Deal With It

Though many directors use horror 

movies as a medium for expressing 

important ideas, the main draw for audiences is the 
thrill of its content — the unexpected and extreme 
events that make up the plot.

“What is perhaps the primary appeal of the 

horror genre,” Kligerman said, “is its ability to wreak 
havoc on our emotional equilibrium… Charting 
(discrepancies) in affective response is in itself 
fundamental to the work of genre analysis and 
raises critical questions concerning the nature of 
spectatorial desire and pleasure.”

There is obviously an overlap between the fear 

response and more pleasurable emotions, such as 
“desire” and positive excitement. It’s the reason that 
my roommate and I can’t wait for our Friday horror 
nights and why audiences flood to theaters when 
a new movie is released. Dr. Kent Berridge, U-M 
professor of psychology and neuroscience, explained 
the connection between these vastly different 
reactions and their shared origin in the amygdala, a 
brain structure responsible for emotion recognition.

“Fear, of course, can be a very terrible 

experience,” Berridge said. “But the kind of fear 
where people are actually kind of chasing horror 
movies or roller-coaster experiences, there’s a 
kind of active fear connected to the dopamine 
reward system.”

Berridge outlined how in this “reward system,” 

certain “cues or sights or images” will incite the 
urge to react to the reward. For example, “when 
you’re thirsty for something, water” provokes your 
urge to drink. These cues are equally important in 
fear as they are in desire.

“Just like the reward cues are attention riveting, 

a threatening percept is also attention riveting,” 
Berridge said. “It’s hard not to look at it, but it’s in 
a threatening way, not in an attractive way. It’s so 
attention-grabbing it has to mean something, it’s 
motivationally significant.” 

People are so attracted to horror movies 

because the brain’s responses to both fear and 
desire share the same chemical and psychological 
components involved in emotional processing.

“(It’s possible) to flip back and forth between 

fear and desire,” Berridge said. “In the lab, we can 
create this, and it may be that in the roller coaster 
and in the horror movie, the situation is scary but 
it’s under control. Part of you knows that, and 
so you can oscillate and enjoy the oscillation in 
the overlap. It’s sort of counterintuitive that fear 
would overlap with desire, but it does, and that 
may be one reason why people can seek out fearful 
experiences that scare them just enough.”

For many, there’s a fine line between finding 

stimulation that “scares them just enough” and 
those that put them over the edge in terror. There 
are personal discrepancies that prevent some from 
indulging in activities like horror films, while others 
with high thresholds for fear actively seek out these 
experiences. Individual distinctions, according 
to Berridge, arise from certain personality traits 
such as thrill-seeking, which draws people to these 
rousing attractions.

Some people are simply more likely to enjoy 

horror and other heart-racing attractions. My 
own thrill-seeking character explains why I 
search regularly for the ideal horror film that will 
astound me with its ghastly content. 

Wednesday, October 27, 2021 // The Statement — 2
Are you scared yet?
By Sarah Stolar, 
Statement Correspondent

Design by Sonali Narayan

Page Design by Sarah Chung
Read more at MichiganDaily.com

