Horror movies are an entertaining way to think about death. In horror movies, people come back from the dead, the dead transform into vampires and other demonic or alien creatures, and living characters are frightened because they might be murdered by a monster or madman at any time. I think that's at the core of its fascination. We don't like to think about death in a direct way, but horror movies make it fun . . . at least for some of us.

Some people are born with the horror loving gene, and some aren't. I've known people from all sides of the social and political spectrum who love it, and those who just don't care for it.

When I was a kid, a lot of adults put horror movies down, thinking too much of it was a morbid obsession, or just plain silly. I don't know if today's monsterkids face that kind of mild repression today, but forty or fifty years ago a lot of hard headed adults thought of it as an inferior and possibly even dangerous form of entertainment.