Although fun to watch the reactions ill never understand the appeal to movies that just scare the shit out of you.

I think it's mostly about adrenaline & dopamine highs . It's the same reason some people still manage to "enjoy" rollercoasters or skydiving and the like despite basically being frightened shitless by them.

All depends where your threshold for fear lies. Up to a point your physiology rewards you for what it interprets as taking a worthwhile risk, past that point it punishes you with an unpleasant response. e.g. you might get a good feeling from driving fairly fast, but if you push too far that good feeling turns to blood chilling terror.

The key is that everyone is tuned differently, some people get stressed out walking to the shops, others have to jump off buildings to get any sort of buzz. And naturally further to that we all interpret the level of risk differently in different situations. There appears to be quite the split between how people react to intense physical and cerebral stimuli.

Personally I don't really like being shit up by films like in the above, but then when I feel the back end sliding on a motorbike or drop a light aircraft into a stall I usually end up giggling like a little girl. (within reason)

As I understand it It's an evolutionary thing, we need some people who thrive on risk and go exploring and others to stay alive and raise the kids & naturally all of this is taken wildly out of context by our modern life styles. End result: some people watch scary films to feel alive and others have to race powerboats.

I'm sure there are other more emotional/metaphysical reasons too like our inherent fascinations with mortality, cruelty, paranormal etc. (and anything else we don't relate to in everyday life). But the fear "high" is definitely a big factor I think.

Moving this video to nock's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.