The Psychology of Scary Movies

Before we try to explain the psychological attraction to horror lets try to establish what the allure of horror is.
Psychologist Dr. Glenn D. Walters identifies three primary factors of the horror film allure.
Tension – created through mystery, suspense, gore, terror, or shock.
This is pretty straight forward elements of horror, the craft and technique of filmmaking.
Unrealism-despite the graphic nature of recent horror films, we all know at some level that what we are watching is not real.
Movies are edited from multiple camera angles with soundtracks and sometimes horror is tempered and made palatable with black humor – a sly wink that what you’re seeing on screen isn’t real.
This also explains why we all remember that scary movie we saw when we were way too young but looks hokey now.
Children have a harder time separating reality and fiction especially when its on a movie screen.
According to Walters, movies that bring high levels of tension, are relevant in universal, cultural, subgroup and personal ways while maintaining an air of unrealism will have greater horror appeal.