Thirst & desire in horror
The following is an excerpt from my essay ‘Thirst and desire: a lustful look at how horror movies can make us horny’
Horror cinema is a potent way to view the realities of human emotion and behaviour, and for most people emotion and behaviour can be never more commanding or all-consuming than when we’re attracted to someone. Stories that feature characters who are painfully horny for one another, and are also assailed by horror, can heighten both sides of the narrative. By mixing portrayals of thirst and desire with images of violence and death, horror filmmakers create an intensity that can mirror real life, while portraying these realities with a certain amount of extremity but also from behind the safety of a screen.
When it comes to the horniness of characters in horror movies, there’s often a deliberate intensity to their thirst for one another. Obsession and a certain insatiability for the objects of lust are rife in horror, as is a leaning towards overt sexuality and provocation both for the benefit of those on screen and thirst traps for those of us watching.
Add to this the bodily focus of so much horror and again we have a perfect intoxicating mix; the physicality of sex in horror is there for everyone to see, and hear, and feel: voyeuristic camera angles, closely framed proximity of characters, lingering close-ups on body parts, ASMR-like sighs and moans, all adding up to create a sense of breathless sexual thirst between the characters and through the screen, giving audiences goosebumps far beyond the scares we might assume horror is all about.
Thirst and desire in horror movies acts as provocation between characters and links the timeless experiences of sex and death through a look at doomed love, the link between grief and lust, and how obsession leads to destruction. Horror also gives filmmakers a chance to explore the physical and emotional realities of everyday life beyond the brutality inherent in the genre, while providing an opportunity for sex to be overt and explicit when it’s aligned with the darkness of fear, graphic violence and body horror. Plus we get the bonus of it being really damn hot.
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