Monsters Under Our Beds: Why We Love Horror Movies

There are fears so universal that we seem born to them. The most universal of all fears, crossing every cultural barrier, is the fear of death. Fear of the ultimate unknown. It's been said that more people claim fear spiders and flying in an airplane than fear death. But that statistic is misleading. We don't fear spiders, delicate creatures so easily crushed. We fear their bite, fear hypodermic fangs sending a rush of venom through our bloodstream, racing for our heart to still it. And we don't truly fear flying in an airplane, we fear that dreaded accident, either human or mechanical error, that sends us plummeting from the sky which is not our home.

Horror movies, no matter what their sub-genre, budget or message, play on our fear of death. Awareness of our own mortality is both our gift and our curse. We must live our lives every day with the knowledge that they will end. We fear death by natural causes, by accident, perhaps most of all we fear death by violence, and the pain and terror such a death would certainly hold. It is that fear which horror films play on most. That fear that they use to reach inside us, to grab what is small and vulnerable and give it a good shake. And we fans of the genre, in a kind of cinematic masochism, can't get enough of it.