A woman is running in a dark forest, sounds of rustling and roaring echoing behind her. She uses all of her strength to flee, however, her strength is depleting. In her confusion, she ends up tripping over an inconveniently placed root. In absolute fear, she turns and suddenly, a scream echoes out. The strange thing is…it’s not her scream, but yours from the sidelines. It’s such a strange mixture of feelings within in that moment.
The science of emotions within a brain is definitely a complicated matter to handle, especially in the department of fear and anxiety. There is always that wonder of why people enjoy their fear and how not just horror movies, but the entire genre has become a popular theme in recent years. Horror has always been careless to show its negative impacts on society that no one is able to properly see the positivity that horror has to offer, especially regarding horror movie.
The beginning of the confusion generally begins with people being unable to differentiate between what fear and anxiety really is. Although they seem like the same thing, fear and anxiety are two different things that work can hand-in-hand with each other from time to time. Fear is the sensing of danger and acting upon it immediately without much thought, normally resulting in fighting back, running away, or freezing up on the spot. In comparison to this, anxiety is more when you continuously think about the issue, trying to come up with ways to get rid of it before it gets to you, which can cause paranoia and stress you out mentally. Now anxiety can lead to fear and fear to anxiety, however, they are separate feelings and can occur by themselves without one or the other.
Health wise, a horror movie would be very good for a person. Though it would seem surprising, there have been studies that have shown that horror movies increase the white blood cells in a person’s body, therefore boosting their immune system. There aren’t any further explanations as to why this occurs as it is a newer study, but that white blood cell increase could be another response to danger in fear. There could be many explanations for this.
To add to this, since horror movies can cause your heart rate to rise, you can burn calories while watching the movie. The most that someone could burn is about 200 calories average and as said before, it’s equal to taking a 30 minute walk. Equally with the boost in immune system, both health impacts are very much positive and there aren’t really any negative impacts to go off of in this point.
When looking for anything that would be considered absolutely “negative,” it would most likely be psychological. However, depending on your appraisal frame before the movie and your mental state in general, your reaction will be different. For example, if you’re looking forward for the horror movie, you will most likely be affected positively. Opposite of this, if you don’t wish to see the movie in the first place due to fear or have no idea that it will be scary, it may have a  less appealing affect. It just depends on the situation.
The most you can see as a general negative affect aside “bad” influences is lasting fear and anxiety. The biggest issue with this is that there is no way to tell when the feelings are going to end and it may add on to other problems in your life. Even more, you can start developing increase fear towards one thing (phobia) due to things or concepts you see in the movie. This, of course, isn’t always the case and horror movies could do the opposite to you. You could become more confident and feel less fearful altogether. It only depends on who you are and your situation.
There are, of course, solutions to any negative impacts that, for the most part, don’t need medical attention. The best is to start off with trying to get your mind off of the fear and anxiety by doing other things, like exercising, which actually helps make you happier, relaxation, or partaking in any hobbies that you enjoy. If it’s a hard to get it off your mind on your own, then ask others for assistance to see if they could do these activities with you to help. It’s best to start off with doing this before turning to anything extreme.
It doesn’t matter whether you like or dislike horror movies, the mental and health affects still affect you, be it positive or negative. For the most part, horror is very much good for you as it can make you healthier and can boost your mental positivity. Besides, negative impacts can easily be avoided and solved without anything too extreme occurring. The only reason why people are unable to see the positivity is because negativity is more overpowering in looks. No one wants to hear positivity because it just seems too boring to them. Regardless of that, altogether, horror movies have done more good than we had once thought to be.