An intro to ‘Horny Horror’

The following is an excerpt from my essay ‘HORNY HORROR: An Introduction’

I’ve long been fascinated by the crossovers where we experience horror and horniness intersecting. These two intense sensations - feeling afraid and feeling aroused - are somehow such natural bedfellows. Both physical and cerebral. Both breathtaking and dangerous. Pleasure and pain overlapping, fear and eroticism, in a heady mix.

There’s something that seems illicit to me about being afraid or being turned on. You feel exposed either way. Like you’ve lost control of yourself somehow. You’ve let yourself go, to be swept up in an emotional and corporeal reflex. Are you going to be found out? Judged? Is enjoying these emotions and reactions ok? Are other people feeling this?

Horror filmmakers regularly use sex and death to provoke audiences and subvert storytelling. They overtly overlap these two intense cinematic experiences - feeling scared and unsettled, and feeling turned on - to produce and extract very specific reactions.

The inherent voyeurism of movies seems to crank up a notch when people are having sex on screen. Like sex, horror can be something you can’t tear your eyes away from - the morbid curiosity and rubber-necking that comes along with viewing something violent and bloodsoaked. 

Intense physical and emotional reactions. A feeling of danger and the illicit. Voyeurism. Explicitness. Obsession and violence. Insatiable lust. Sexual awakenings. Body parts and physicality. Monstrous penetration. Kink and fetish. The taboo. All of these aspects and more entwine to create hot and heavy horror, and I’m here to explore.

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