Why Nekoa Douglas Likes Horror Movies

by Nekoa Douglas
(Detroit, Michigan)

What I like about horror movies is that there’s something interesting to me about them. Horror movies started out way back in 1920’s. Universal was the studio that made its name with horror pictures during this time.

The first actors who starred in horror movies were Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. They brought Dracula and Frankenstein respectively to the screen. The horror movies I think are the best are Bones (2001) by Snoop Dog, Leprechaun in the Hood (2000) and Skeleton Key (2005).

Most horror movies do the same thing over and over and some just look stupid. People look for where sounds are coming from, or they just stand there and get killed. Girls act dumb and scream, throw stuff and try to run, usually tripping and falling.

More and more people love horror movies. I think they're better than other movies, and some people may not agree with me. Horror movies and more interesting and even their trailers are sometimes scary.

No popular genre has proven more reflective of America's unpredictable cultural mood swings than the horror movie. At the same time, no popular genre has proven more conducive to the expression of idiosyncratic nightmare visions than the horror movie. If these claims seem contradictory, even vaguely paradoxical, that is hardly surprising. For the horror genre consists of a group of texts as diverse as they are numerous, as controversial as they are popular, as conservative (or progressive) in their overt messages as they are progressive (or conservative) in their subtler implications.


Although the horror genre may be lacking in firm boundaries or essential features, its rich and storied history, which spans the entire twentieth century, exhibits a remarkable degree of coherence. There are at least three reasons why this is so. For one thing, what appear at first to be utterly dissimilar entries often turn out upon closer inspection to conform in crucial ways, whether formally, stylistically, or thematically. For another thing, as is typically the case with pop cultural phenomena, market forces have dictated that the most commercially successful entries would each spawn a host of unimaginative imitators. This in turn has led to a fairly reliable boom-and-bust period of the genre. Scary movies are nothing new, but films like the Saw and Hostel series have offered something different: They focus less on the suspense of the chase and more on the suffering of the victim.

If you're not a horror movie fan, you may be puzzled about why people put themselves through the ordeal of watching such movies. Defenders of these movies may say they're just harmless entertainment. But if their attraction is powerful, Cantor says, so is their impact. These impacts are felt by adults as well as children, by the well-adjusted as well as the disturbed. They may linger well after the house lights go up -- sometimes for years.