In this episode Trent responds to Allie Beth Stuckey’s claim that Christians should not be fans of scary movies.

10 Classic Novels Every Christian Should Read – https://youtu.be/eHYN4b7k2L8?si=FCtDC7r9B7uIE6mu

9 Christian Films to Watch with Non-Christians- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln0QBIg78i0

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Can Christians Enjoy Horror? Responding to Allie Beth Stuckey

Recently Allie Beth Stuckey raised a ruckus on X when her show account shared a clip of her saying that Christians shouldn’t watch horror movies because Christians shouldn’t put themselves in positions to be afraid.

Allie eventually took down the post but many people in the evangelical world share her attitude and, with Halloween right around the corner I figured we should take a look at what Allie said and see if horror is compatible with the Christian life. On X She wrote “Christians shouldn’t be a fan of horror. You shouldn’t be reading books, or watching movies, or listening to true crime podcasts that make you scared.” And here’s the clip:

Allie Beth Stuckey (video clip):

I just don’t think it is at all an option for Christians to not only fully participate in Halloween in all of its darkness and scariness, but I also just don’t think that Christians should be a fan of horror in general. I don’t think you should be reading books that make you scared. I don’t think you should be listening to true crime podcasts that make you scared. I don’t think you should be listening to or watching movies that make you scared.

And I have—I’ve seen Rosemary’s Baby. I’ve seen the really scary movies out there. And now I’m like, “Oh, I know why my mom didn’t want me to watch Signs when I was in sixth grade.” It scared me. Like, being scared—it’s not—how many times do we read throughout Scripture from Jesus in the New Testament, “Do not fear, do not fear,” and yet we purposely consume content that is meant to make us scared?

I don’t think we often think about the horror content, the scary content, Law & Order: SVU, that you are imbibing. That is actually a direct contradiction of Jesus’ command to not fear or be anxious about anything. So we shouldn’t be facilitating fear.

Is It Wrong for Christians to Feel Fear?

On the one hand, I agree a lot of modern horror is spiritual garbage. It’s either corn, which was very common in ’80s slasher movies, or it’s gorn, gore porn that is violent just for the sake of shocking people. And there are a lot of scary movies I don’t watch because I’m too old for that. If scary movies aren’t your thing, that’s fine.

But Allie’s argument was more than just about horror exposing us to impure or sinful images. She was saying Christians have a moral duty to not put ourselves in fearful situations and I fundamentally disagree with that idea. The Bible only tells us to not be afraid of some things. It doesn’t tell us to completely live without fear.

For example, Scripture says we shouldn’t fear being alone in the world or facing evil by ourselves because God is always with us. You can see that in Isaiah 41:13 which says, “For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, ‘Fear not, I will help you.’” Or the classic Psalm 23:4, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”

As well as in John 14:27 where Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

But the Bible also talks about things we should be afraid of like Proverbs 1:7 which says “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

That doesn’t mean we should be afraid of God like we would be afraid of a horror movie monster. But we should understand that God is not our harmless friend, he is the all-powerful creator who should be treated with a healthy amount of respect. That’s why in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when Susan asks Mr. Beaver if Aslan the Lion, who represents God in Lewis’s story, is safe, Mr. Beaver responds:

“Safe?” Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Or consider this warning from Jesus: “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear him!”

We should not treat sin and the agents of sin, especially the devil, as if they can’t possibly harm us. The Bible says no one can snatch us out of the Father’s hand but we can freely walk away if we say “yes” to the evil one. Now, we should not be terrified of this because God equips us to resist temptation, but we also shouldn’t foolishly ignore the Bible’s warnings. It’s why St. Peter gives this balanced advice about fear and confidence, “Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you. Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.”

Horror, Christianity, and the Defeat of Evil

And there’s a long tradition of Christians using the genre of horror to overcome fear and rejoice in God’s triumph over evil. In my previous episode, 10 Classic Novels Every Christian Needs to Read, linked below, I mentioned how Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula does this well.

The novel is written as a series of letters and diary entries, so it has a kind of “found footage” quality to its horror. I’m sure the book was more unnerving to audiences who, unlike us, don’t already know the basics about vampires, but many of the scenes are creepy. My favorite was the increasingly harrowing logs on the doomed ship sailing to London whose crew are picked off one by one by Count Dracula.

Ironically, Stoker was not Catholic, but the characters in the novel appeal to Catholic practices like the sign of the cross, crucifixes, and the presence of the Eucharist to fight Dracula which they first considered mere superstition. The novel can be seen as a liberal Protestant defense of Catholicism as being the only faith to have an ancient, enduring quality to be able to stand against that which is truly dark and demonic.

But even before classic novels, Christians would dress up as the devil and demons in ways people found distressing or fear-inducing as part of plays to mock the devil and show how Christ and the saints defeat them, a tradition which is still celebrated in parts of Europe today.

Indeed, one way to glorify God is to showcase evil in all its unsettling ways because a hero is only as good as his villain. The 1973 film The Exorcist shows this because the priest’s status as a hero is underscored by the horror of the demon possessing the young girl he is there to save.

Now, The Exorcist has very disturbing scenes so I don’t recommend it for everyone. But the 2023 film Nefarious covers similar ground in a less disturbing way though it’s still scary for some, as Allie herself noted when she saw the film.

[Video clip: Allie Beth Stuckey discussing Nefarious.]

I agree that many films in the genre of horror are not edifying, but that’s true for every genre. There are great books and films in the romance genre and there are many others that are just triple X material, but the trash doesn’t negate the treasure.

What Signs and Other Horror Movies Can Teach Us

Allie also referenced the 2002 film Signs in her episode as a “scary movie”. But the moderate scares in that film are part of a great way to communicate truths about the Christian faith, which I noted in my previous episode on Christian films to show non-Christians.

In case you haven’t seen the film, in Signs, Mel Gibson plays Reverend Graham Hess, an Episcopal priest who left the priesthood after his wife was killed in a car accident. Hess lives on a rural farm with his two children, one of whom has asthma, and his brother, a failed baseball player.

The title refers in part to crop circles that form in Hess’s field that signal the beginning of an alien invasion. The film masterfully teases out the tension of the invasion as Hess learns about it through things like alien clicking on a baby monitor and spooky encounters in his crops at night. The latter part of the film follows the family as they’re barricaded in their farmhouse during the invasion.

The signs aren’t just the crop circles but also how God providentially leaves signs in our lives for us to follow even if we don’t notice them at first. The movie does a decent job, even if a little heavy-handed at the finale where all the threads come together to reveal how providence was working to protect the family the entire time, even through tragedies like the death of Hess’s wife. It brings to mind Genesis 50:20, “you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

And the movie has a scare that still holds up well today where the older son watches a news broadcast revealing the alien through grainy home video footage and the tension is perfectly teased out with music to give you the perfect jump scare that still gets me.

Or as one commenter put it, “This was the most terrifying event of my childhood.”

Now, some people say Signs is a “thriller” and not a horror movie designed to just truly frighten you and Christians shouldn’t watch those movies. But if you do that you will miss out on classic films that are, at least in part, designed to scare us. Films I recommend of this kind include:

Psycho, Jaws, Alien, The Shining, The Thing, Poltergeist, The Silence of the Lambs, The Blair Witch Project, The Ring, and Paranormal Activity.

The last film uses found footage to follow a couple haunted by a demonic presence in their suburban home. In spite of the viral marketing, I wasn’t scared when I watched it in theaters with other people, but when you watch it by yourself at home it’s fairly unnerving.

And that film has value even though the demon remains undefeated. But horror can also be a great genre to glorify God because when the horror is defeated by goodness, goodness seems that much better. Even many early slasher movies kind of get this because the survivor is usually a female virgin, called the final girl, while the deceased are those who had sex and paid the price.

Why Children Need to Learn to Face Fear

But once again, if horror or thrillers aren’t your cup of tea, then don’t watch them. But it’s not sinful for other Christians to enjoy the fruit of human creativity, even if that fruit is just something that lets us feel the emotion of fear in a safe environment.

In fact, it’s probably a bad idea to remain totally isolated from what scares us or do the same to our children. A large body of research has shown that children are more anxious now than in the past. From 2016 to 2023 childhood anxiety increased by over 50% and a 2008 study found, “A substantial association between child anxiety and parental control (d = .58) was found”—i.e., an association with helicopter parenting.

If children grow up without learning how to manage stress they will be weaker as a result and there is actually a biological parallel for this.

From 1991 to 1994 researchers were sealed in a glass complex called Biosphere 2 that was cut off from the outside world. The facility created its own oxygen from plants and trees inside and the trees had all the sunlight, water, and soil they’d ever need. The trees even grew faster than regular trees, but strangely would often fall over before reaching maturity.

Researchers discovered this was because the lack of wind in the facility prevented the trees from initiating a chemical process that produces tougher wood to make the tree more resilient. Without the stress of wind, the trees didn’t develop that stress response and so they remained weak their entire lives.

I shouldn’t have to spell out for you what happens then if we protect kids from anything that might stress them or treat them like children forever, like the recent statistic that says about 20% of Gen Z have a parent join them when they go to a job interview.

Now, I protect my kids from sinful material, which we could liken to fungus that rots a tree, but if we keep our kids in a protective bubble so they never have to be afraid or uncomfortable, then they’re going to end up like Rod and Todd, the painfully sheltered children of Ned Flanders on The Simpsons, as evidenced in this classic scene where Lisa is tasked with babysitting them:

[Video clip: Rod and Todd Flanders in The Simpsons.]

You can also see this in modern children’s media that went from something that could moderately frighten children to things that are inoffensive and forgettable. But stories about heroes conquering fearsome villains are good for children. It’s why G. K. Chesterton said:

Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give a child his first idea of bogy. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogy. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

When I watch older movies with my kids I’m surprised at just how much nightmare fuel was in them because the creators trusted that kids could handle being treated like adults in formation.

One lasting memory I have of being scared by a film as a kid was the scene in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure where Pee-wee Herman, who is on a cross-country trip to recover his stolen beloved bicycle, is picked up by a truck driver named Large Marge who we later learn is the ghost of a driver who died in an accident. She tells Pee-wee the story of the accident in a way that’s chilling for children and cheesy for adults before revealing what the driver’s corpse looked like:

[Video clip: Large Marge in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.]

Now, as a kid I remember being totally freaked out by this scene and it really stuck with me. So, when I showed it to my children I watched their faces to see their reaction—and they laughed. Apparently growing up on 21st century media makes you immune to some scares.

So maybe I’ll need to turn up the dial for them, if they want to be spooked and show at least the older ones something like The Sixth Sense or Are You Afraid of the Dark?. Heck even Ernest Scared Stupid is edgier than most modern children’s entertainment and has been called a gateway to horror for children.

But as I said, today’s children’s media doesn’t have that same effect. And it’s not just films and TV. As a kid I loved the classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark whose stories were adorned with absolutely creepy illustrations by Stephen Gammell. But in 2011 they were replaced with the most milquetoast illustrations by another author until enough outcry brought them back in 2017.

The Problem With Sanitized Entertainment

A lot of modern entertainment is doing what Christian media has done for decades. They overly sanitize their product so that it isn’t offensive, but when you do that it also isn’t memorable. So, I agree with Matt Walsh when he said:

Most “faith-based” entertainment is bland and flavorless and, worst of all, a display of artistic cowardice. It refuses to take any chances or do anything that might be even remotely upsetting . . . the modern day Dostoevsky or Flannery O’Connor or even Michelangelo, if such a person exists, would never get a film made by a Christian studio because their stories would be too upsetting to the middle-aged Christian female audience that all of these companies exclusively cater to.

So, this Halloween I hope you and your family will be able to find the right balance of feeling the spooks in the darkness that make you feel alive enough to rejoice in the comfort we have in the light of Christ.

For more on that, check out my colleague Joe Heschmeyer’s recent take on Halloween linked below as well as links to my episodes on films and books every Christian should read, even if they might be a little disturbing.

Thank you for watching and I hope you have a blessed day.