Why do teens enjoy horror? by Cliff McNish

First, make no mistake, adults love horror stories too. It’s just that teenagers are more likely to go to movies to watch them together, which in turn leads to more horror films being made with teenagers as protagonists as studios cash in on this. Money drives the world, right?

But still … the violence in horror – the death, torture, all that. Why do we like it at all? A million theories. But one thing is for sure: many of us do, not just teenagers. As Christopher Booker says in his seminal book  The Seven Basic Plots, The Overcoming the Monster story – be it Beowulf, King Kong, The Minotaur, Medusa or whatever personal monster takes your fancy – is one of the great archetypal stories we love to hear over and over. We love to see a great hero rise up to destroy the Dark Soul.

Elizabeth Marling says this: ‘The modern day slasher film is our cultural version of the Myth of the Minotaur. In the original myth, King Minos would send for a group of young virgins (adolescents) to travel by boat to be sacrificed to the Minotaur, who pursued and killed each of them in his massive labyrinth. Today’s slasher films always involve the same components. A group of attractive but platonic friends are on a getaway (no supervision). They are pursued by a menacing, elusive figure who traps them in an enclosed space either physically or through fear, confusion, etc. The group is killed off one by one when they fall victim to the killer’s “labyrinth” by being isolated from the others. The story is popular because it has been for thousands of years. It appeals to something that transcends a particular time and place. The basic story appeals to something deep within the psyche or is familiar in some way.’

Right.  But even so, why do teens watch and read horror than most adults? It’s an intriguing question. Here’s what I read recently from a condescending adult on the subject: “… don’t know to be honest but maybe it’s because teenagers are weird little creatures but maybe [also] it’s because they want to be liked by their peers so maybe they wanna show off? (Peer pressure?) …”

Don’t you just love the way adults are always happy to give their opinions on why teenagers do or like things? It’s something I’ve noticed that teenagers are less likely to do about adult behaviour, to their credit. Clive Barker, one of Britain’s greatest horror writers and filmmakers, says simply that “violence is as much a part of being a person as anything else and deserves to be explored as much as any other emotional experience.” Only it’s not politically correct to say that, is it? We like to praise people for being good, doing kind stuff, and that’s great. But let’s stop pretending we don’t have our darker side that loves to explore the meaner, more selfish, more nasty seams of life. You teenagers have begun to see only too clearly those darker undercurrents  in yourselves and everyone else. Real life isn’t like Disney’s Frozen, is it? It is full of difficult and sometimes unhappy endings, and horror is honest about that more than any other genre.       

So let me be crystal clear: there’s nothing wrong with you if you enjoy horror. It’s ok to love blood-bath fiction. It’s OK to like your werewolves savage, your vampires corrupt, your monsters hungering for the suffering of others. Who wants Voldemort to show mercy? Who wants Miss Trunchbull in Matilda to be nice to the class kids? Our enjoyment comes from being given permission to hate these guys. Horror and to some extent fantasy writing allows us that catharsis better than any other genre. Plus the invitation to lapse into irrationality, violence and outright bizarreness you get in horror is extended so rarely to you teenagers in life. Where else is having your bodily fears and darkest emotions allowed expression other than when you watch or read horror?  

Horror is also honest storytelling. It’s honest because it doesn’t pretend, as so many adults do when they represent it to you, that the world is basically safe. You guys are going through seismic body and mental changes – you don’t feel safe. And when you peep out at the world it’s not safe either, is it? Horror acknowledges that. Yes, horror often come at all this like a chainsaw, it’s extreme, it's often totally OTT, but we like to explore the extremes of things – that’s, in fact, the entire point of exploration. In some ways teenagers are hard-wired for horror, too. Scientifically, brain studies have proven that you are guys are more likely to take risks than adults. Part of that is finding out what happens when you read or watch something truly scary. I remember as a teenager being fascinated by the depths of depravity that people can sink to. I was curious about real crime horror, mass murders, all sorts of nasty stuff. Was I a bad person? No. I was just exploring that, in the same way I was exploring everything else. Fear is also, physiologically, close to excitement – so horror, when done well, is intensely exciting. But it’s safe, a vicarious, temporary scare.

And yes, there are plenty of putrid slasher movies out there, but a lot of horror doesn’t show any gore. And when it does ... well, how is that different from the real world? This world of ours, it seems to me, is becoming more violent, more extreme, less tolerant, increasingly failing to properly address immense issues like climate change. I think you teenagers see many adults seeming to casually accept this and are rightly appalled. So you go to horror for truth-telling.

I was lucky enough that my first horror novel, a ghost story called Breathe, won numerous awards, and was voted by the Schools Network of British Librarians as one of the top adult and children’s novels of all time. It features a terrifying mother. I don’t pretend she’s not terrifying. She is. As is the figure of Cullayn, who haunts two teenage boys in my second ghost novel The Hunting Ground. My latest ghost novel for teenagers, Lily's Monster, took me a long time to write. In some ways, I could think of nothing more scary than the very family who surround you as a teenager, who should love you, who should be caring for you, turning into absolute monsters. It’s horrifyingly intriguing to see what happens when they do. It’s even more intriguing to find out how you react to it, because that defines who you are much more clearly than if you sail through life without any big problems. Lily’s Monster has moments of real violence. The tension is also pretty unrelenting. I hope you enjoy it.