It is a seemingly perverse instinct: paying £12 to enter a darkened room and be subjected to images specifically engineered to terrify you for 90 minutes. The good news is that you aren’t a masochist, or worse a sadist. The allure of horror movies stems from an entirely natural impulse, honed by millions of years of evolutionary psychology.

read more Halloween 2014: What makes Ouija boards, demon dolls, and evil clowns so frightening? – Features – Films – The Independent.