Horror Movies

What is it about Horror Movies that so fascinates us? In a world where the Nightly News (“What’s that?” - Gen Z) is often more horrible than anything Steven King could ever dream up, why do we feel we need more of a bad thing?

Well, to be clear, we don’t all feel that need. I don’t, for example. I am anxious enough about life without manufacturing something else to scare me. But that’s me and clearly, I’m not ‘normal’. (I can hear you, readers! Stifle!)

For years, my fascination with the fascination of horror has securely occupied shelf #76 in my hierarchy of existential concerns. However, a recent encounter with Paul Tillich (Dynamics of Faith) has forced me deep into the stacks.

Without realizing it, Tillich gave me the interpretive key I’d been missing. Tillich’s concept of the Holy (shared in part with Rudoph Otto, Idea of the Holy), emphasizes the dual nature of the Transcendent breaking into our lives. On the one hand, we are fascinated by a glimpse, however distorted, of the Infinite from our finite perspective. On the other hand, we are terrified.

You have to go back 3,000 years to find the best expression of finitude confronting the infinite (The Book of Job). Job’s iconic expression of faith is timeless: “I know that my redeemer (infinite) lives and on the last day (finite) he will stand upon the earth and after my skin has been destroyed (finite), yet in my flesh I will see God (infinite).” (Job 19: 25 – 27) 

This is the fundamental existential crisis of human life. We explored it elsewhere on this site in The Human Predicament. We strongly suspect that there’s something beyond the curtain, not necessarily an ‘afterlife’ but an ontological context for this life:

“This has been a fun visit but now, really, can you just tell us what’s really going on ‘cause this certainly isn’t it, or at least not all there is of it.”

For 100,000 years human civilizations have pock marked Planet Earth. We are everywhere, but nowhere the same. Civilization is rapacious, adaptive, and resilient. Yet ours is the only civilization that has this as its identity defining motto: Freedom from Transcendence. 

Not that that matters. Consensus doesn’t constitute truth. But it does help to explain our obsession with this one conclusion (this ultimate concern - Tillich) and our eagerness to sift through ‘evidence’ to find just those nuggets that support that conclusion. We have Faith in the power of immanence; like Madonna, we’ve gone ‘all in’ on the material world. 

Of course in any civilization you will find ‘exceptional’ individuals and groups who deviate from the ideological norm. But as far as I know, we are the only civilization that has consciously reasoned from a pre-ordained, ideology-driven conclusion back to a logic, an epistemology, a cosmology, an ontology, and an ethics that support that conclusion.

So we find ourselves in a bit of a pickle. We are firmly encased in our finitude but our gaze is naturally fixed on the infinite beyond. We think of ourselves as empiricists but “Don’t look up!” Head down, go to school, get a job, have a family, accumulate a nest egg, and, when it’s time to die, exit stage right sans  fanfare. 

If you must look up, cover your eyes, or put on a pair of reflecting goggles. At all costs, keep your eyes off the Prize (aka the Pearl of Great Price)!

We live schizophrenic lives. On the one hand, we are viscerally aware of the Transcendent; on the other hand, we are required to deny it. We are left with existential dread and nothing to explain it, account for it, mitigate it or sublimate it. We are left with untethered terror (aka free floating anxiety). 

We need an outlet for that feeling; we need something we can connect to the fear that accompanies us every day of our lives. We must find a way to project our subjective fears onto something objective, to ground our internal terror in an external source. Enter, Nosferatu! 

Got kids? Ever try telling them, “Ghosts are not real” and “There’s no such thing as monsters?” How did that work out? Kids are terrified by the solidity and the fragility of their existence. Well they should be! But just like us, they cannot deal with it on face value. They have to find a way to project their feelings onto something concrete and immanent (if ultimately immaterial and absent).

We stand on the edge of the infinite; we are terrified. No use pretending we’re not. We are all Kierkegaard! There’s not enough Jack Daniels or Baskin Robbins in the entire world to keep a lid on existential dread. 

We are well curated fruit of the Enlightenment vine. Our skins are bursting with the sugars of democracy, technology, and science.  Who needs anything more?

The answer, of course, is “We do!” No, I’m not invoking the “G-word” here. God forbid I do that! I’m just talking about some sort of context that might enable us to make sense of it all. All bravado aside, there is no one among us so insensitive that they do not peer into the darkness and wonder. 

Of course, we can bail out. We can hide behind nihilism (solipsism, skepticism, relativism, etc.) or just declare the world, “Absurde!” (Artaud) and walk away. Good on you if that works. I’m not so lucky.

Our fascination with ‘what lies beyond’ is not explicitly religious. What’s just over the next ridge, beyond the borders of the sea, at the end of the rainbow, outside the observable universe? Or after death?

Our ‘hyper-materialistic, immanence-obsessed’ civilization is characteristic of just one corner of the World during one short period of time, the North Atlantic since 1700 CE. Our age is characterized by an insatiable urge to account for the phenomena of daily living without resorting to any ‘transcendental’ influences.

According to Tillich (above), Faith is the foundational human experience. It is our act of ultimate concern. It is the reaction of who we are to what we’re not; it is the response of the finite (us) to the infinite (Transcendence). We all have a million little concerns in our lives, but they are all just refractions of the one and only ‘ultimate concern’, the infinite.

All art, from cave paintings to Finegan’s Wake, can be understood as a chronicle of humanity’s confrontation with the ultimate. The Bible is one long meditation on that experience: Moses’ Burning Bush, Elijah’s ‘still small voice’, Jesus’ Transfiguration, Paul’s Conversion, John’s Seventh Seal, etc. 

It is in that context that we need to evaluate the horror film genre…and grant some ‘reck’ to those folks, even in our own families, who seem addicted. What we might experience listening to a Mozart Requiem, they might get from hanging out with Chuckie and Freddie over a long weekend. We all have more in common than we think.

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Image: The Triumph of Death (c. 1562) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder portrays a grim, chaotic world where skeletons wage war against humanity. The painting is densely packed with scenes of destruction, highlighting the universality of death across all social classes. Bruegel’s dark imagery reflects the fears of his time, shaped by war, famine, and plague.