An interesting exploration of why horror movies scare us. Nesseth draws on neuroscience, psychology, and her evident love of the horror genre to break down scares and explain how they work and the impact they have on the viewers' brains. I greatly appreciated her willingness to point out gaps in research and instances when conclusions are not generalizable due to bias, small sample size, or lack of diversity in experimental groups. And I was delighted to discover that this is a surprise (to me, at least) queer book!

Warning for spoilers of the horror movies she discusses, I guess, but most of the ones where she reveals specific scares are older films like Alien or The Exorcist III, which I feel like the target demographic of this book will have already seen?