The Psychology of Scary Movies pt. 1

What are horror films? How do Tension, Relevance, and Unrealism play into the popularity of horror films?

    Horror films are movies that often appeal to the audience's fear and negative emotions, with darker themes and oftentimes death and gore. The three key factors that play into the popularity of horror films are tension, relevance, and unrealism. Tension is created through the mystery, suspense, gore, terror, and shock, which is the foundation for horror films in both story and filmmaking. Relevance pertains to universal, cultural, subgroup, and personal relevance. Universal relevance relate to universal fears and experiences, such as death or the unknown. Cultural relevance is things that relate to society and its issues or current fears, such as war or disease when fear of those are heightened. Subgroup relevance are when they pertain to specific groups, such as teenagers, which have a lot of horror films that relate to them. Personal relevance is when theres identification with the antagonist/protagonist, or a personal condemnation of the antagonist. Unrealism is very important to horror films as it is much more difficult for people to enjoy, let alone sit through, these themes and visuals when they believe or know that it is real life. People are far more disgusted and unsettled by gory documentaries than they are to gory films because they know that movies aren't reality.