IF SCARY STORIES ARE, WELL, SCARY, WHY DO WE LOVE THEM?

Psychologists point to the “safe scare,” that adrenaline rush we get when frightened in a controlled environment. It’s like riding an extreme rollercoaster, minus the risk of losing your lunch, dentures, or phone on a loop. In the cinema, we scream together, laugh nervously together, and emerge victorious together. It’s an entirely new kind of bayanihan, one that raises not houses but the hair on our nape.

- RICARDO T. PAMINTUAN

And maybe, deep down, it’s because horror feels familiar. In a country where we brave typhoons, traffic, tuition hikes, skyrocketing commodity prices, shady contractors, and crooked public servants, a manananggal hovering outside the window is nothing.

Of course, like art or food appreciation, horror is subjective. For some, The Conjuring is an addictive escape from the true horrors of everyday life. Others still can’t shake off The Ring more than two decades later. Having an alien life form use you as an incubator for its seemingly indestructible spawn is the nightmare introduced, and still being introduced, into our collective consciousness by the Alien franchise.