Atheists and Horror Films

[vorlon13]

What's a horror movie ??

Go watch Mysterious Skin all the way thru and come back and we'll discuss it.

[ignoramus]

It just means you're a normal well rounded individual.
Why do people go on crazy new rollercoaster rides. Same thing. To lose control. and to pee a little in public...

[Aractus]

Okay, so I recently saw, The Babadook and it freaked the everloving shit out of me. For the past week or so I've been barring my closet with a chair, looking under my bed, and sleeping with the light on. So, I'm just wondering, even though I'm an atheist and I don't believe in the supernatural, am I being hypocritical in my nonbelief by being spooked by a horror film?

Really? I didn't think it was very scary.

Sinister on the other hand - even though the storyline was predictable and I kpet seeing Ethan Hawke and not "Ellison Oswald" - holy fucking shit it still scared the living shit out of me! The scariest horror film I've seen since [Rec]1 & 2 and before that The Ring.

[henryp]

1) I think humans are designed to be spooked by the dark. Makes a ton of sense evolutionarily speaking, right? That's when stuff that's good at seeing at night comes out and eats stuff that isn't good at seeing at night.

B) Supernatural stuff is a vague world. I've encountered several atheists who aren't ready to give up on a lot of the 'unknown.' They say things like "Who knows what happens when you die!?" Or "Consciousness is something separate from the 1's and 0's pinging around in our brain." Both ideas that include things that as far as we know don't exist. So you open up the idea of things that don't exist existing, the door isn't really closed on them. If you don't think you know what happens when you die, it's hard to completely rule out some type of ghostlyness nonsense.

Thirdly, we haven't put the thought into it like we have with God. I think most of us have really hammered through the thought process of there being God, and reached a confident conclusion. Random supernatural stuff, however, (I'm guessing) most have given cursory thought at best. I don't believe in ghosts. But not nearly with the certainty I don't believe in God. And that's probably a lot due to the specificity of God. While generic supernaturalness casts a pretty wide net. Plus the threat of real people just murdering you for realsies adds something to the fear equation. Because there's almost certainly no monster in the closet. But it could be some maniac with a hatchet. I think the two threats can blend a bit.

Combining 1) with the thirdly point, the human mind evolutionarily speaking is built to expect threats from unseen places, and seeing a scary movie just triggers that response?

[Aoi Magi]

For me, the kid was too annoying to feel any kind of horror in that movie. I was kinda disappointed when the babadook didn't get the kid!
I love japanese/korean horror films and stories though, cause it's not just about ghosts and monsters, rather some really twisted psychological shit.

But yeh, if you feel scared for a while after watching a horror movie, then that just means you really got into it and enjoyed the movie. We are not super-logical robots, sometimes our emotions and feelings do get the better of us.

[Angrboda]

When I was starting up a new anti-psychotic medication, I found that suddenly I was afraid of 'things' coming at me from the dark. Why are we afraid of the dark, but not with the lights on? Probably something evolutionarily hard-wired into us. We've learned to suppress those fears, but it makes sense that the right trigger could reactivate them. Given that the hardware is still there, if dormant, it seems reasonable that the right stimulus could reactivate it. Nothing to do with 'reason' — it happens below decks.

(I have this theory that we are addicted to stories because they act like simulators for the brain. We 'know' that the story isn't real, but for many of our brain circuits, that knowledge is absent. Much like an athlete or pianist mentally rehearses a performance, a story puts our brain through a virtual performance of the events. If that's the case, it makes sense that the non-conscious, non-rational parts of the brain would be 'primed' by the experience of watching a scary movie or reading a scary story. The rational part of our mind is only a small part of the whole, and the rest doesn't have the same defenses against irrationality.)

[rexbeccarox]

If you haven't seen the movie, don't click the spoiler tag!!

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The whole point of the Babadook was that there was nothing supernatural going on. It was all about the mom's mental illness. WAY scarier than some ghosty boogieman.

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[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If you watch a porn flick are you concerned about getting a blowjob in the middle of the night?

'Concerned' isn't the right word.
Boru

[Alex K]

I love monster horror, I really dislike supernatural horror. I find it scary, but not enjoyable.

[FreeTony]

I increasingly find Supernatural stories/films more and more tedious. Supernatural just never makes sense, be it horror films or religion.

Why does a ghost just want to go around frightening people?
What's the point of a demon going into a body and making them act stupidly and say naughty words?
When the priest comes along and uses the power of God to exorcise the demon, why does he need magic water and a bible? Why doesn't God just get rid of the demon without all the novelty items that don't actually do anything?

I find some horror films nauseating e.g. Braindead, but never really scary. I do enjoy horror films, but generally for tsome of the interesting ideas that good ones can generate.