Why Many Women “Hate” Horror Movies

Bella Breakdown

The other day, I asked three of my female friends if they wanted to see the new horror movie by Jordan Peele, “Us.” All of them responded with a resounding “No!” Over the years of consuming horror films like an addict, I have noticed a trend. Many of my female friends really dislike scary movies.

In fact, it was much more common for my girlfriends to quickly turn down a movie than my guy friends. They would say things like, “I would be covering my eyes the whole time!” or “I couldn’t even watch the trailer!”

This was very curious to me. I began to ask myself, Why do so many women in my life hate scary movies? Is this coincidence or something more? So, I began my research.

It turns out that there was an actual study about it! Yay, science! The study stated that women are more likely to anticipate a horrible thing happening later in the plot of the movie.

As soon as the scary music starts to play, their imaginations zoom to the future horror they are about to witness. Whereas dudes, on the other hand, are more likely to stay in the present moment of the movie and are less likely to imagine the worst. So, the idea is that scary movies are that much more anxiety-inducing for the person with the bigger image, and that person just so happens to be more likely a female.

Interesting, right? The one thing that this article didn’t talk about was the reason why women are more likely to imagine the worst. (In fact, the article was very sexist. It said that their “brains are different.”)

Of course, I have a few theories as to why this could be, and science backs me up. My theory is this: as the more oppressed sex, women are more likely to have experienced trauma as a child. This trauma would lead them to think about the worst possible outcome of the horror movie, and thereby experience stress from the film in a more real and visceral way.

Author: Amanda Sims

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