Why We Crave Horror Movies

Stephen King’s cause and effect essay answers a question that at one point or another of our lives we have pondered about. King mentions a number of reasons as to why people enjoy this type of genre of movies. As Stephen mentions everybody is crazy in someway or another. I agree with this type of reasoning because it is true that people have rhetorical conversations at times, or because at times when no one is looking we make funny faces. The peculiar thing is that as King mentions later on in the essay there is a border in between the type of insanity that gets one taken away to an asylum or the type of insanity that gets one looked at as being weird or funny. King is trying to say that as long as our type of insanity does not hurt anyone then we are left alone to proceed being insane.

Stephen King’s first argument is something that I would say everyone has to agree with. When we go to horror movies we are proving people and ourselves that we can bear the horrific events that we will watch; it is as King says like “riding a roller coaster.” Another reason we go to the movies is to have fun. The movies are a type of entertainment that keeps us away from the outer world. Just with the 2 hours that the movie takes we relax and concentrate on what we are watching rather then problems that we are having in the outer world.

I agree with King’s mentality that we are exercising a muscle when we watch these horror movies. The human being has a set of emotions that we all feel should be exercised. For instance, we all love, we all hate and at times we feel sad. The only emotion that we don’t exercise is the feeling of hurting someone else, because as I stated that crosses the border from sanity to insanity. When we go to the movie theatres and we watch these horror movies, and we watch people being menaced we enjoy it. We enjoy it because our sick fantasies are being realized, and as one of the viewers our instincts are being set free.

Lennon and McCartney’s slogan for, “all we need is love” is one that I am sure everyone agrees with, but as King says “the gators must be fed.”