Why We Crave Horror Movies

This term refers to opposing aspects of a society that is advanced and socially developed. In the essay, anticivilization is used in terms of emotions, those emotions that oppose civilized ones like love and kindness and keep society balanced and orderly. Too many opposing negative emotions like hatred, anger, or cruelty produce a kind of anticivilization, yet these emotions need to be expressed, and horror movies are one way to do so.

This serial killer is known to have killed at least 12 people between 1935 and 1938 in Cleveland, Ohio. The killer dismembered victims and left their body parts in Kingsbury Run, an economically disadvantaged neighborhood of the city. Only two victims were identified, and the killer was never caught, although researchers believe it was Francis E. Sweeney, a surgeon who entered a mental hospital at the time the murders stopped. King refers to the Cleveland Torso Murderer and Jack the Ripper as examples of serial killers, who are on the extreme end of the “insanity” spectrum.

A 1978 zombie movie directed by George Romero and starring David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott Reiniger, and Gaylen Ross as survivors of a zombie apocalypse who hide in a shopping mall. It was a follow-up to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and has several sequels. A remake was released in 2004. At the end of the essay, King mentions the film as one of the “most aggressive” horror films and one of his favorites to watch to keep his own “insanity” in check.

This 1965 science fiction horror movie, directed by Daniel Haller, stars Boris Karloff, Nick Adams, Freda Jackson, and Suzan Farmer. A scientist goes to visit his fiancée at her family home and notices strange behavior among her family and townspeople, which he learns has resulted from a radioactive meteor. Jackson plays the fiancée’s mother, who is partially hidden in a bedroom because her face is physically affected by radiation. King refers to the film and Jackson as a “horrible melting woman,” a metaphor for the “ugliness” viewers see in horror movies that reinforces their own “normality” (Paragraph 4).

The largest part of the brain, the forebrain includes the cerebrum and other brain structures. The cerebrum—the gray matter that people imagine when they think of what a brain looks like—makes up 85% of the brain and controls functions like thinking, planning, reasoning, and language and sensory processing, as well as emotion processing, including the processing of fear. King refers to the “civilized forebrain” as a place above the “hungry alligators swimming around in that subterranean river beneath” (Paragraph 12). He juxtaposes this civilized part of the brain with the parts of the brain responsible for basic bodily functions, as well as poetically describing the “insane” parts of the brain where the alligators live as less logical.

A serial killer operating in London, England, in 1888, Jack the Ripper murdered and mutilated at least five female sex workers in the East End, an economically disadvantaged district of London, although other murders at the time may be attributed to him. The police received letters supposedly written by him. Like the Cleveland Torso Murderer, he was never identified. King refers to Jack the Ripper and the Cleveland Torso Murderer as examples of people on the extreme end of the “insanity” spectrum.

An extremely conservative view or a person who resists political or social change or progressive reform is a reactionary. King mentions this term twice, in Paragraphs 4 and 11, claiming that quality horror movies are reactionary because they confirm the status quo and one’s sense of “normality.” Additionally, he argues that the best of these films confirm this “normality” while also exhibiting revolutionary and anarchistic characteristics because they interrogate and promote a radical change to perceived norms. This mix of reactionary, revolutionary, and anarchistic characteristics in a film creates conflict.