Heidegger’s account of the uncanny and its role in angst suggests a compelling reason for why we are drawn to certain horror films that neither horrify nor frighten us. Uncanny horror films act as aids to self-understanding. They slowly turn us toward different ways of looking at the world; they confront us with characters in situations progressively shown to be far different from our own. The characters are always faced with mystery; frequently, with the supernatural and genuine evil; sometimes, only with their own imaginations.

Their struggles are artistic expressions in dramatic form of a more ordinary activity, which, according to Heidegger, we are engaged in all the time. Da-sein, he says, is always ontological. Although the uncanny thoughts might be ones that we ultimately reject (for good or bad reasons), it is the entertaining of them that is of greatest importance for the Heideggerian account of the uncanny. By engaging in a rudimentary form of ontological reflection, we prepare ourselves for reflection of a more sustained sort. As we watch uncanny films, we must revise or abandon the ontology that we initially used to understand what we see on the screen, and by doing so we become more explicitly aware of our own ontological commitments. We might, of course, also be horrified and frightened, but the feeling of uncanniness is paramount. If some horror films are capable of arousing feelings associated with Heidegger’s concept of the uncanny, then we have at least one good reason to take the genre seriously, just as Aristotle gave us reason to esteem tragedy.

¶ 3:02 AM