Why Women Watch Horror

Horror media has become a vital and transgressive artistic inflection point for women

by Lindsay Lee Wallace // Illustrations by Lauren Sophie Gletty

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The theater is dark, and vibrant with the film’s staccato soundtrack and an accompaniment of whispers and shushes. We jostle one another for fistfuls of nauseatingly over-buttered popcorn. Music swells, and the eponymous monster of Andy Muschietti’s 2013 film Mama is revealed: a skeletal wraith with bony, grasping fingers.

My friends and I—fourteen-year-old girls high on sugar and suspense—explode into screams that quickly devolve into breathless laughter. In front of us, a man whips around to hiss, “Quiet! You won’t be laughing when you wake up and that thing is in your bed!” 

For a moment we are still—unsure, threatened, chastised. Then, we laugh harder.

In his 2019 review of research on the psychology of horror watching, professor G. Neil Martin writes, “the literature suggests […] men and boys prefer to watch, enjoy, and seek out horror more than do women and girls,” and that “low empathy and fearfulness are associated with more enjoyment and desire to watch horror.” 

This idea was reiterated in a comment by Dr. Allison Forti for a 2020 piece on binge-watching horror, saying those who watch horror tend to “have lower levels of baseline anxiety.”

Women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with anxiety as men. LGBTQ people, especially young people without adequate support, are even more likely to demonstrate symptoms of anxiety. And yet, most of the friends I watch and discuss horror with are other women. All of them, including those who aren’t women, are queer. What’s more, my horror-watching accomplices and I tend to be an anxious, sentimental bunch.

In 1986, four researchers conducted a study into gendered responses to horror through the lens of social comparison. They sought to test a common sentiment, summed up by horror theorizer Noel Carroll, who suggested that “…horror fictions might be thought to have the function of scaring people into submissively accepting their social roles.”

Pairs of college students were asked to watch a horror film together. Individuals were told to react with fear or indifference, and researchers gauged their partner’s reaction. Women in the study reported enjoying themselves most when watching with a man who appeared stoic and undisturbed. Men enjoyed the experience most when watching with women who were frightened. The resulting conclusion was termed “snuggle theory.” 

It’s not hard to find evidence that horror functions as much more than merely an opportunity to reify entrenched gender roles.

According to this research, if women do enjoy horror, it’s for the opportunity to startle at just the right moment and know they have a satisfied embrace to turn to. Thus the woman who knows her companion has enjoyed the film can be confident she has performed femininity appropriately.

This research, already based entirely on stereotypical gender roles, also left no room for any possibility that the participants were anything other than straight and cisgender—and yet it remains a basis for horror theorizing today. What’s more, it’s shifted even further into the pale, from an explanation of why cis, straight, Midwestern men and women might have enjoyed horror together in the ‘80s to supposed evidence for gender roles as a reason people enjoy horror in general today.

It’s not hard to find evidence to the contrary. Although iTunes doesn’t have a “Horror” chart, of the top 10 podcasts covering the genre’s infamous cousin true crime, eight are hosted partly or entirely by women. Women’s interest in the grisly genre (especially white women’s) has constituted a phenomenon worthy of consideration everywhere from Mother Jones to The New York Times, and in books like Rachel Monroe’s Savage Appetites. 

Although they’re not officially ranked by iTunes, horror podcasts also see significant success. Sharai Bohannon, co-host of the popular horror podcast “A Nightmare on Fierce Street,” has felt a connection to the genre all her life:

“I find most slashers comforting. […] I did not have the best childhood, so it was comforting to know that I could sit down with a movie that gave me something that terrified me but also gave it an end time.” 

When a person’s lived experience provides ample and indefinite opportunity for anxiety, one might expect them to shy away from additional unsettlement. And yet, manufactured terror, with a considered plot and set conclusion, can offer something unique: a cathartic relief not promised by real life.

“Existing in society as a woman,” says Vox film critic Emily VanDerWerff, “has always [had] horrific aspects to it. […] Bodily control is taken, [you] are subject to the whims of powerful people, [and] women who accrue power are seen as threats.”

“As a trans woman,” she continues, “when I came out […] it was seen as [a] big step down or something […] it was very much like, ‘You are opting into the horror movie.’ And I’m like, […] this isn’t a decision [and] horror’s my favorite genre, so…” 

Another popular explanation offered for women’s interest in horror is based on the genre’s penchant for portraying sexual assault and its aftermath. Films like I Spit On Your Grave (1978) helped create the rape-revenge genre, which some feel explores the trauma of sexual assault and allows survivors a vicarious opportunity to even the score.

“Existing in society as a woman,” says Vox film critic Emily VanDerWerff, “has always [had] horrific aspects to it.”

This theory seems shored up by a 1987 study of 155 moviegoers, in which researchers concluded that, “women attended [horror films] because they wanted to experience a just ending [and] satisfying resolution.” 

2020’s controversial and critically-acclaimed addition to the sub-genre, the thriller Promising Young Woman, has raised divided opinions. More than anything else, this seems to demonstrate that although there may be trends among women horror watchers, they (just like members of other minority groups) are no monolith. 

According to Dr. Rachelle Rumph, Associate Dean of Studies and Professor at Sarah Lawrence College, we consume media through, “a filter or lens that is oriented through our personal tastes, memories, [and] cultural influences, as well as the ideological structures of society.” 

Fierce Street’s Bohannon describes how different horror subgenres, “Impact each of us differently depending on our own lived experiences. You can learn about your friends,” she says, “by what they deem scary.” 

When my friends and I left the theater after Mama, coasting on a jittery, hysterical high, we compared notes. To this day, I find personal connection to be a defining part of horror watching. It turns out that being terrified and then relieved with someone creates a sense of intimacy—a sort of bonding through simulated shared trauma, a modified snuggle theory focused not on gender roles but on the ability to share with your peers.

In a 1984 study, researchers explored the “sensation seeking” explanation for enjoyment of horror movies, looking for evidence that those who enjoy horror crave heightened experiences. They broke “sensation seeking” into categories including, “thrill and adventure” and “disinhibition.”

While the men they studied fell largely into the “thrill and adventure seeking” sub-category, the women were more likely to fall into the “disinhibition” sub-category: they enjoyed frightening films because, as they watched, they felt themselves letting go of their repression of behaviors considered socially inappropriate.

Virginal final girls and sacrificial sluts alike have always taken up more screen time in horror than other genres, excepting romance. And while much of it has been spent screaming in blood-soaked lingerie or brandishing equally blood-soaked phallic symbols—behaviors whose feminist merits can be debated—they are undoubtedly socially inappropriate.

As VanDerWerff says, horror is, “one of the few genres in Hollywood where we are allowed to be the unquestioned protagonists. […] I don’t want to call it feminist, but it has been used by a lot of feminist storytellers to create deeply thoughtful works of art.”

Horror gives women an opportunity to explore representation not through roles, but through actions.

Horror gives women an opportunity to explore representation not through roles, but through actions. While emotions and reactions in even the most progressive stories of other genres often fit relatively well into societal expectations, women in horror refuse to play by the rules. Horror demonstrates the worst possible situations, and in turn its women demonstrate the worst possible reactions, from killing your rapist to eating your best friend’s boyfriend. Howling with laughter in a crowded movie theater seems tame by comparison.

“Over the last decade,” says Dr. Rumph, “we’ve seen an interesting array of horror media in which women are these intriguing characters who have played more of a central role in the story […] Women can see themselves in more complex ways.”

Referencing movies like Us, Bird Box, Midsommar, and Hereditary, Dr. Rumph points out how, “This can make for a fulfilling viewing experience for all genders, and particularly women-identified spectators.”  

Rather than being characteristically repulsed, or finding comfort in replicating societal roles, women seem to turn to horror for the way it releases them from expected reactions. When women watch horror, we feel more free. 

For myself and other queer horror aficianados, this experience of controlled terror and relief, strong identification, and disinhibition is likely even more intense.

“I know so many trans people who are deeply into horror,” says VanDerWerff, “because horror is so often about what happens to the human body, and we are acutely aware of what we have to do to make our bodies our own. […] Horror’s about existing in a world where you feel like you have to constantly be on guard […] and I think that speaks to a lot of women, [to] me specifically, and to trans women.”

Comparatively little modern research has been conducted into women’s interest in horror, and what does exist is predicated on assumptions set by studies from decades ago. The predominant theories follow established stereotypes, and even those with merit define women’s responses entirely in conjunction or contrast with men’s. 

Why is research, and therefore public opinion, seemingly so far off base when it comes to women and horror? From a cynical, capitalist perspective, why hasn’t anyone fully grasped what a rich and relatively untapped market we are? The disconnect is a testament to the power of disregard for the perspectives and needs of women, queer people, and other marginalized groups.

Women in horror, for all their sexualized dying and gaslit desperation, are allowed to do things that women in other films are not. Women watching horror feel we are allowed the same—if not by society, then by each other, and our own psyches. 

For evidence I need only think of my friends and me laughing at the monster in Mama. Of how in that moment, together in the dark with fake butter drying on our fingertips, the anger of an adult man was the kind of thing that could make us laugh even harder.

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