Analysis of 'Why We Crave Horror Movies' by Stephen King

“Why We Crave Horror Movies,” by Stephen King is about why people enjoy watching horror movies. Some people are good, and some are not good at hiding the reaction of getting scared that they got by watching horror film. People challenge fear, because people spend their money to watch horror movie. To show that they are brave and capable are some of the apparent reasons. People also want to imitate the feeling of being scared, and to enjoy it. Noticing others get terrified is also fun. Not a single person is totally sane because we enjoy watching horror movies. The dark moments that people had or experiencing created blackness inside them or insanity, and it has to be released. All people have a desire to do something that may not be tolerated by social norms and should not be done. Nonetheless, People learn about having a simple view of what is right and wrong from a young age. The right emotions have to be trained, so we can release it in a way that society accepted. However, the insanity inside us will not disappear because it is part of us. The insanity is waiting to come into existence, and it needs to be fed constantly. Horror movies allow people to remove their insanity without ramification because it is the legitimate way of feeding it.

Analysis

The article essay by Stephen King with the title, “Why we crave Horror Movies” is about the thrust for horror and suspense that we as human beings find in ourselves. Though in the beginning, Stephen talks about the human insane potential of making faces and horrible grimaces to counter the fear and hysteria when he feels that no one is watching and we have other fears too such as the fear of animals and dark places but later the tone and message of the essay changes to something larger than horror movies.

The metaphor created for the theatregoers is like sitting on a roller coaster ride and extended further to say that both make a scream out of us and in this paragraph of the essay the analogy is extended with some parallels and certainly Stephen here thinking about all ages because he writes that when a person turns 40 or 50 this craze of horror subsides. So I think that the question in Stephen’s mind is the title of this essay. Further, the horror movies instill in us the worth of our being normal as he cites the example of a melting woman in “Die, Monster, Die, The reasons why we go to see horror movies are many and some of them are: We counter our fear and feels the same as when we sit on the roller coaster ride, it establishes our idea of ourselves being normal and reactionary, and we go to have fun.

However, the question persists what kind of fun do we obtain from seeing other menaced and killed and here there is an obstacle when we see the horror movies are not we accustomed to a modern version of public lynching? Here we are confronted with the ethical questioning tied with our watching of horror movies. Till now we were concerned with the psychological push that allows us to sit in the theatre to watch movies but now the essay has taken the direction of ethical questioning. Apart from that the mythical fairytale-like horror film avoids the ethical paradigm and gives as psychic relief and we are bound to use our analytical capacity to dig deeper into the underlying meanings of the representation on screen.

At this point in the essay according to Stephen the sanity now becomes a matter of degree because it exists in multiple forms as he gives examples but in the next paragraph he says that we are social animals. As I said at the beginning of my analysis that what started as a question evolves into something more nuanced and myriad thought processes recorded by Stephen for his readers. Now he says that as we delve deep into the psychology of the human mind we maintain a status quo of civilization and the emotions we applaud are positive ones such as love and loyalty but no sooner we deviate that we face harsh criticism and sanctions. We are punished for our wrong deeds as society categorizes some of the deeds as acceptable behaviours and some as not accepted.

Nevertheless, now as a reader; one can witness the moral quality of Stephen’s thought in the paragraphs that we now read. He questions morality with the example that he uses a “truck full of bowling balls and full of dead babies.” (King, 1). I remember here watching in my childhood the movie “Problem Child” which is not horror at all but it is about the child who is so naughty that all the Nuns of the facility in which he studies and her parents at home are devastated and I remember while watching this movie I was so overwhelmed with emotions that I prayed that I must not have a naughty brother. This is an example and I quote it just in order to confirm the point of view of Stephen regarding “If we share a brotherhood of man, then we also share an insanity of man.” (King, 1)

The moral paradigm of the essay now emerges and it can be seen that Stephen is right in allowing the free rein to his thoughts as he gives an example of the fact that “mythic horror movies are like morbidity unchained.” (King, 1). He says further that he wants to see the most aggressive of the movies and here he is downright moral didactic who preaches about the morality of giving food to hungry alligators and to instill skepticism in “civilized forebrain.” This can also act as a metaphor because here he may be talking about the horror movies as a portion of food to the brain as it fills the mind with skepticism but how is not yet resolved. In fact, it could be stated that Stephen is talking about the mind consciousness akin to “subterranean river beneath” and here he is progressive.  

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