Exploring the Spiritual Value of Slasher Films: Watching Horror Movies as a Sacred Practice

Abstract

This thesis describes the author's experience watching the slasher films Black Christmas (1974), Halloween (1978), Scream (1996) and The Cabin in The Woods (2011) as a sacred practice. The rise of the religious "nones" in the United States has necessitated a renewed look at how this population makes sense of the world. The concept of reading as a sacred practice was adopted from Not Sorry Productions and applied to the medium of film. Charles Long's definition of religion as orientation is used to provide a theoretical framework to posit that the practice of sacred engagement with secular texts is a secular equivalent to religious investigation. Horror films have long been part of popular culture and our collective imagination, and their engagement with the monstrous posits them as unique and important vehicles for social commentary, which make them excellent texts for watching as sacred practice. Over the course of an academic year, the author viewed each film multiple times with different participants for each viewing and recorded the subsequent meaning making conversations. It was found that individual horror films offer virtually endless opportunities for discovery, which facilitates a deeper understanding of the world in which we find ourselves and what it means to be human. These meanings can only be uncovered through repeated viewings combined with intentional conversations with others.