Horror Movies Can Be Good for Anxiety

There’s a science-backed reason why horror can calm people down

Ashley Abramson
Elemental
Published in
5 min readOct 31, 2019

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Illustration: Arabella Simpson

LLaura Turner was on a road trip in Iceland with her brother when she found an unconventional method to manage her anxiety: watching horror movies. “It Follows and The Thing provided a really great distraction from the reality of having just had a miscarriage; I could totally forget about my…

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Ashley Abramson
Elemental

Writer-mom hybrid. Health & psychology stories in NYT, WaPo, Allure, Real Simple, & more.