Loo.me

There’s an interesting article in the NY Times called Taking Back The Knife: Girls Gone Gory in which it talks about the recent increasing in horror movies being made and the strange findings of recent box office receipts showing that women have an even bigger appetite for horror films than men.

This surprised me although i have seen it first hand; last weekend both Diane and Althea put Halloween 2 tops on their “want to see” list.  Some of the reasons that the NY Times said were:

• Women can identify more with horror films as their are other women as the main characters. Diablo Cody (writer of “Juno”) said, “When I watched movies like ‘The Goonies’ and ‘E.T.,’ it was boys having adventures. When I watched ‘Nightmare on Elm Street,’ it was Nancy beating” up Freddy. “It was that simple.”
• Women enjoy pure adrenaline rushes. As Cody says, “Some of us just like that stuff. We like suspense, we like to be scared, we like to have visceral reaction in the theater. Maybe I’m starved for adrenaline, but for me watching a horror movie is very pleasurable. So making one was kind of a dream.”

Diane, the resident expert here, claims it’s because horror films are much more emotional than other genres.  Most movies are event driven or just visually pleasing which caters more to the male.  Horror movies, on the other hand, are all about messing with your emotions – which is much more powerful to the woman than the male (in theory).

Whatever the reason is, i was surprised to hear this gender preference.  Any one else have any ideas?

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