Do horror movies help or hinder your mental health? It depends

April 7, 2026 — 7:00pm

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The first horror movie I ever watched was Paranormal Activity. I was just 13 and you can guess how it went: I watched through my fingers, and had a friend guard the bathroom door during a mid-movie break.

I felt traumatised, yet it unlocked something within me. Ever since, I’ve been a glutton for horror. Slashers, creature features, psychological haunts – you name it, I’ve seen it.

I usually watch about two horror movies a week. Given the golden era that horror is enjoying – just look at the success of Weapons, Sinners and Frankenstein at the 98th Academy Awards – that average has been steadily increasing, much to my mother’s dismay.

“You should stop watching so many scary movies,” Mum regularly tells me, suggesting the spooky material I consume is the reason I often find myself feeling stressed and anxious.

I usually laugh it off, assuming it’s just something her parents told her back in the day.

However, after I binged the first three Scream movies back-to-back, her words gave me pause. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a prolonged period without watching horror. What if it is tied to my ongoing stress, and I just never stopped long enough to notice?

It turns out my mum’s concerns aren’t entirely unwarranted. Several studies have indicated scary stories can put your body through the wringer, releasing hormones like cortisol (the stress hormone), norepinephrine and adrenaline. That, in turn, has an effect on involuntary bodily functions, including heart rate, respiration rate, salivation and temperature control.

This is why your heart races and muscles tense when Freddy Krueger tears through a teenager’s dream in A Nightmare on Elm Street, or a little girl gets abducted by spirits through a television in Poltergeist.

The reaction doesn’t necessarily dissipate after switching off the TV.

Dr Martyn Pedler, director of coming horror-comedy The Only One and community mental health worker, says some people must carefully manage stimulus before bed.

“Some find themselves emotionally destabilised easily,” he says. “Some wouldn’t watch anything with violence or gore in it; some won’t even watch a TV show where there’s a lot of shouting. It depends on the individual.”

This is particularly crucial for children, who on average experience more negative thoughts and interrupted sleep after watching horror. Without solid sleep, your immune system and brain function are at risk, and it can – you guessed it – cause moodiness, anxiety and depression.

A study in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence also found brains differ in processing the “threat” of horror. For an anxious person, the brain remains on high alert; for an adrenaline-seeker, the stimulation feels more thrilling than anxiety-inducing.

Everyone, however, has their “no-go zones”, Pedler notes.

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I could watch a slasher any day and sleep soundly. But turn on a motherhood horror like The Babadook or Hereditary, and I’ll toss and turn all night. As a woman considering future children, for me these films hit closer to home – it’s more difficult to detach from them than over-the-top slashers that bear no resemblance to my reality.

It’s not all bad, though. Scientia Professor Jill Bennett, founding director of UNSW’s Big Anxiety Research Centre, says watching horror films (particularly body horror) can allow viewers to externalise anxieties or pain carried in the body, or to confront anxieties about death and physical deterioration.

Consider Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance. A satire about Hollywood’s obsession with youth and beauty, it also explores the horror of ageing, loss and decay.

“When I first saw The Substance,” Bennett says, “I was living with and caring for someone dying of cancer. On the surface, you wouldn’t imagine it would have any relevance to my everyday life.”

But its final scene, “like a bloodbath of viscera and gore, felt like a huge release. When you’re trying hard to hold things together and deal with the reality of death, revelling in a scene where everybody gets splattered with gloop can be hugely cathartic.”

Bennett says psychoanalysts and film theorists argue horror can allow “the return of the repressed”, enabling such people to work through trauma rather than dwelling on the horror of everyday life. Horror movies “give symbolic form to what would otherwise be unthinkable,” she says.

Some have gone so far as to use horror as a form of therapy. Researchers in the Netherlands have used a horror video game called MindLight to treat children with anxiety. In several clinical trials, it was also beneficial as classic cognitive behavioural therapy, as players showed reduced anxiety in everyday life.

Pedler says horror’s narrative frameworks can be more comforting than everyday life.

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“It’s a kind of counter-intuitive ‘safe space’,” he says. “You sit in the dark, knowing to some degree what you’re in for. You can always leave the cinema or stop the film if it becomes too much. Even if the ending of a movie is ambiguous, the movie still ends.”

It could arguably better prepare us to deal with current dreads and future threats, which illustrates how horror lovers showed greater resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is widely known as the “paradox of horror” – it simultaneously terrifies and reassures you. And that’s not even considering its social value. Watching horror is reportedly linked to the release of oxytocin, a hormone that facilitates feelings of closeness among groups. Horror cinema screenings tend to fill up faster than most – this isn’t Hollywood’s most profitable genre for nothing.

My mother isn’t entirely wrong, but I won’t be giving up horror any time soon – it turns out my brain is one that finds inner peace in a bloodbath.

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