What Do Your Favorite Horror Films Say About Your Personality?

Take a thesis from some horror fan in England and add a healthy dose of too much time spent reading women's magazines in America. What've you got? What your choice in horror movies tells other people about your personality.

Outsider vs. secret pagan religious cult

This category is made up of such films as Black Sunday, The Wicker Man, Horror Hotel, Children of the Corn and arguably The Blair Witch Project. In these films, an insular community which practices a nature-based religion is the bad guy. The good guys are usually educated and sometimes smug. Although horror films, according to Darryl Jones in his book Horror: A Thematic History in Fiction and Film, "work to enforce social norms," the good guys in this genre often do not survive the picture. Maybe this is because the norm turns an about-face once the doomed good guys enter the weird town full of bad guys. A habitual viewer of this type of film may be longing for a return to traditional Western Christian values and may feel like a fish out of water much of the time.

Cannibals

If you like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes and Dead Alive, you may be disillusioned with human culture. In these films the predatory cannibals are always backwards rednecks hunting either middle class people on vacation or explorers who happen upon the wrong island. The more evolved prey, having more to lose, says Jones, is "ultimately more dangerous." Like the yuppies in these films who slaughter the cannibals in nasty ways, you might ultimately be a down-and-dirty fighter when it comes to defending what is really important to you.

Vampires

Vampires in literature and film are metaphoric for various draining social issues including nationalism, the aristocracy, capitalism and even a literal plague. The vampire character is as seductive to the viewer as it is to its victims, making the modern vampire film vacillate between sympathizing with vampires and wanting to kill them. This wavering of emotions is used in Interview with the Vampire, Near Dark, The Hunger and The Addiction as well as countless others. The vampire fan is a romantic and therefore sees beauty in the darker side of life, but may wish also for love, happiness and delicious garlic bread.

Zombies

Zombie fans are the most intriguing bunch. These movies can be a statement against commercialization, like Dawn of the Dead, or a post-apocalyptic fantasy such as 28 Days Later. The original meaning of zombie, of course comes from Haitian voodoo. A zombie fan may enjoy planning escape routes in case of a disaster and could be a survivalist. He also dislikes being controlled by authority figures.

Demons

The devil made me do it. Fans of Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist and The Omen may fear loss of control of the body, especially female fans. If a Catholic this fan is probably lapsed; if Protestant, she may dislike the religious right as again control of the female body figures prominently.