Dear Buddy: Why Do Humans Watch Horror Movies?

Dear Buddy,

What’s with these horror movies? My human likes to curl up on the couch under a blanket, with me protectively in her lap of course, and watch these ghastly movies about serial killers, ghost infestations and lurking monsters.

Why would anyone want to scare themselves? You don’t see us creating an entire film genre dedicated to horrors like empty food bowls or late dinners, so why do humans make these movies?

Your fan,
Mildly Curious in Manhattan

Dear Mildly Curious,

This is a question I’ve pondered for some time, inasmuch as I care about anything human-related to ponder. My human also watches those movies and he also does so with me sitting protectively in his lap.

Then I realized something. None of the people in these horror movies have cats!

The family from The Conjuring? They have a dog. Stanley Tucci’s family in that crappy movie about flying monsters that kill everyone? Dog! The family in that other crappy movie about giant axolotl-type things that terrorize people living in a coastal community?

You guessed it! They have a dog too.

You see where I’m going with this, right? Humans who serve us cats literally have no fear because no monster or crazy cereal killer would ever risk attacking a home with a cat in it.

Suppose a hungry evil monster is let loose in my neighborhood and is making its way through the street at night, then sees me in all my meowscular, intimidating, tigeresque glory sitting at the window, keeping watch over the nocturnal world.

That monster is going to skip right over The Buddy Domicile and go in search of easier pickings because it sure as heck doesn’t want to tangle with me and my claws. I have that effect on monsters.

They may be monsters, but they’re not stupid. Breaking into a home with a cat is like breaking into a t-rex enclosure. You’re asking to get mauled by a huge, meowscular apex predator who will eviscerate you and look handsome and badass while doing it.

People who serve us cats know this. They know no monster or killer or robber would be stupid enough to go near a house with a cat. They can probably sense my meowscularity two miles away!

So sometimes our humans may want to know what it feels like to be vulnerable, what it would be like if they didn’t have tigers like us guaranteeing that no intruder approaches. THAT is why they watch horror movies. Take it to the bank!

Your genius friend,

Buddy the Cat

30 thoughts on “Dear Buddy: Why Do Humans Watch Horror Movies?”

    1. I haven’t seen it but I read the synopsis on your site and I really like the idea of cats being able to see cool stuff that’s invisible to humans. It could make for some fun premises.

      Also clicked over to see if you listed Alien in your 70s list and was happy to see you did.

      It’s one of my favorite movies of all time, my favorite SF-horror movie, and I’m a big fan of Ridley Scott and HR Giger, but the movie is from before my time so I was aware of the imagery before I properly saw it for the first time in my 20s.

      There are great stories from people who saw it in the theater and lost their minds, and it’s interesting reading about how it was received when it first game out because, yeah, no one had seen anything like it before.

      That first Alien movie never loses its power despite all the sequels with diminishing returns and all the copycat movies.

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      2. Nice xenomorph figurine! That looks like it might be one of the McFarlane line, the comic book artist who did Spawn and revived the Spiderman franchise in the late 90s.

        You might like Revelation Space since you’re into the whole horror-SF imagery. I’ve never read a book that comes close to the way RS conveys how cold, dark and lonely it is in the void between stars, and how utterly weird it is out there.

        It deals pretty heavily with the Fermi paradox (the math indicates the galaxy should be teeming with life, so where is everyone?) and the Dark Forest hypothesis (basically: we don’t want to advertise our existence because God only knows what’s Out There), posthumanism and the singularity, advanced artificial intelligences, the ruins of long-dead alien civilizations that hint at entirely new levels of physics we haven’t even glimpsed yet, and lots of other bizarre stuff.

        It’s science fiction but leans heavily into grimdark, horror and gothic territory as well, and there’s nothing else like it.

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      4. The most recent one was Prey. Off the top of my head, a Predator kills a bear, a wolf and a python, human hunters kill a lion and rabbits, and there’s a sequence showing a small animal kill an insect before it’s killed by a large animal, and the larger animal is killed by the Predator.

        I didn’t mind it though because the animals were all CGI and it wasn’t gratuitous. The movie followed members of a Comanche tribe in the 1600s and the entire point was that the Predator was just another part of the chain, supplanting humans as the apex predator.

        That extended to the way humans treat each other as well, because there’s a gang of French fur trappers who capture a Comanche brother and sister, treating them cruelly before using them as bait for the Predator.

        But of course they don’t understand that the Predator is uninterested in them because they’re tied up, weaponless and defenseless, and ignores them in favor of the challenge of killing the heavily armed Frenchmen.

        It was the best movie in the franchise since the original IMO.

        Although the one before that was funny as hell, more like a comedy. Everyone keeps calling the Predator a Predator and Olivia Munn’s character keeps pointing out he’s actually more like a sport hunter.

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    2. Love that version of Dracula. I grew up with Creature Features and Chiller Theater. Doubt anyone here would remember those. I’m surprised my parents let me see those but do not remember being that scared.

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  2. Hmm. Thought about this question for bit. Todays horror movies suck! I like the classics and B movies that were pretty silly. Best, and last, ghost story was The Others with Nicole Kidman and the great Fionnula Flannagan. No blood. No dirty language and no sex. Latter two really don’ t mind. And like i said in another post i DETEST killing of animals in horror movies. Do not care if it is fake.

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    1. Mike Flanagan is my favorite current horror director. He wrote and directed The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix, which was really well done, and has adapted a bunch of Stephen King material, including the excellent Doctor Sleep. (Watch the director’s cut if you check it out, it’s much better than the theatrical version that had a bunch of stuff cut out to trim the run time down.)

      It Follows from 2014 was also really well done, everything from the premise to the soundtrack to an excellent cast and really moody cinematography.

      I also like Jordan Peele’s movies, although I don’t know if you can call them strictly horror. They’re primarily social commentary with horror and sometimes science fiction elements, like “Nope,” which is about a brother and sister who find a bizarre alien on their horse ranch.

      Funny enough, Peele got his start on a Comedy Central sketch show with Keegan Michael Key and their first movie together was Keanu, a 2016 movie about Peele adopting a cute kitten only for gangsters to steal the kitten. The movie is about Key and Peele trying to get him back and going to increasingly ridiculous lengths to do it. It’s probably my favorite cat movie.

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      1. I saw all movies you mentioned. I liked them. But could not wrap my head around Nope. I was being bothered by 2 cats while watching it so i could give it another try. Keanu was hilarious.

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      2. It was weird. I don’t remember everything but there was a reason why the alien killed certain people and not others, and obviously Steven Yeun’s character badly miscalculated when he thinks it’s there to help him.

        With those Jordan Peele movies there’s always some sort of societal thing going on under the plot.

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    2. There’s a website where movies are listed where animals are abused and/or killed. I think it’s “Does the dog die?” or something similar. I wish there was a list for books!

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      1. To Quilpy. Alien movie was great. James Cameron, a vegan, refused to slaughter cat in movies. Jonesy survived in two movies and hissed at that alien. That was hilarious! And Ripley is an icon. Risking her life for child and her cat Jonesy.

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      2. First one was Ridley Scott, the sequel was Cameron. The cat was meant to represent Ridley Scott, which is why he’s an orange tabby.

        There’s a dramatic shift in tone from slow-building, claustrophobic tension and terror in Alien to action movie cliches and explosions in Aliens.

        I always felt like James Cameron has the subtlety of a shrieking alarm clock and people who preferred Aliens to Alien were off their rockers, but to each their own.

        Still, in addition to Alien, Scott did Bladerunner, Legend, Black Hawk Down, Gladiator, The Martian, Raised By Wolves and a bunch of other stuff.

        For Alien and Bladerunner alone I’d put him at the top of my science fiction director list.

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      4. BTW, as I was scrolling through the list for cats I noticed a SIGNIFICANT UPTICK in movies where the cats gets killed (offscreen and onscreen) after the 1980s/1990s.

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      5. Maybe killing animals was a film taboo before that? Or they shied away from it because audiences don’t like to see it?

        One movie where the death of an animal really bothered me was I Am Legend with Will Smith. That dog was beautiful, a classic Husky, and I hate that she died.

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    1. I feel totally safe knowing that no monster or killer would even consider attacking Casa de Buddy because of the hulking tiger who lives here. His roar could turn entire armies away.

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    1. Yeah, he’s prolific. Hill House, Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, Midnight Club, the recent Fall of the House of Usher based off of Edgar Allen Poe’s work, Gerald’s Game, Hush, Oculus and Doctor Sleep.

      His first movie, Absentia, was literally a zero budget film. He borrowed cameras and editing equipment, got his friends to act and made a really solid movie.

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      1. I wilk check out his other works this month. Will be at apt with two cats that really do not bother me but Cosmo the cat stays near tv pawing at it. 🤣🤣🤣Funny to watch but distracting.

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  7. To M. Jesus Christ. I should not have read all of that. I am shaking. Saw Drag Me To Hell years ago. I was disgusted. Good thing i have never seen most of what was on list.

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  8. Dear Buddy,
    I don’t know why humans watch horror movies.
    I think that it causes them to have their sensitivities blunted, so that the horror of what’s going on in Gaza can be sustained.
    I can’t watch horror movies. I would rather have my human sensibilities intact.

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