Jesus Said ‘Fear Not.’ He Didn’t Say ‘Don’t Watch Scary Movies’

As a queer person raised in Catholic purity culture, I’ve found horror films to be a vital way to confront and heal from my religious trauma. 

Take Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus, for example. The film was released this year and dealt explicitly with the horrors of conversion therapy. In it, the evil of religious homophobia is on full display, even taking demonic form haunting the queer protagonists. 

In the film, two teenage boys named Naim and Ryan live in an isolated, deeply Christian Australian town and share a blossoming romance. After Naim, in a fit of adolescent jealousy, outs Ryan and the pastor’s son, Hunter, both boys are forced to undergo a “deliverance healing.” The ritual unleashes a demon that takes the form of the person each boy desires most. Later, Naim’s own mother puts him through the same ritual, siccing the shape-shifting demon on him as well. To Ryan, the demon looks like Naim. To Naim, it looks like Ryan As Naim later learns, his own mother and other community members forced the children to undergo this healing, knowing that they would be haunted for the rest of their lives, perhaps even killed by this unseen force. 

Watching Leviticus, for me and other moviegoers who may not share my lived experiences, was watching an abstract fear be made visible and its violence real and surmountable. 

This is why I can’t agree with the recent argument put forth by conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey. On Oct. 20, Stuckey posted a video on X where she argued “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.” Her post, which has since been deleted, sparked a firestorm online. While she found support among some Christians who have long derided Halloween for its accused associations with witchcraft and the occult, she was also met with criticism from others in her own camp who appreciate the cultural commentary and adrenaline rush that horror provides. 

In her post, Stuckey cites Jesus’s words “Do not fear“ (“Be not afraid”). She argues that when people watch horror, “this is a direct contradiction of Jesus’s commands to not be fearful or be anxious about anything.” 

But Stuckey is theologically wrong. Firstly, the Bible is full of horror. In fact, the phrase “be not afraid” is repeated, often in different ways, right during its most horrifying moments, from the prophet Isaiah reassuring the Israelites facing exile and hardship (Isaiah 41:10) to when Jesus bids his disciples farewell (John 14:27). In Psalm 56:3, which David wrote when he was seized by the Philistines, he writes “when I am afraid, I put my trust in you.” 

In each example, God recognizes that we as humans feel fear and need reassurance. When Jesus tells his followers not to be anxious, he does so explicitly offering the reassurance that God will provide because of God’s love for us. Fear is a natural, normal response to situations where we feel threatened, even within our faith communities—like I did as a result of homophobia and purity culture. Horror films that explore religious isolation, persecution, and violence, are a way for me to encounter this trauma in a safe, controlled environment. It’s a way for me to tell myself “be not afraid” when those same feelings of fear bubbled up while watching Leviticus or other films and later when discussing religion or entering a church. 

I consider that film and the horror genre writ large as a gift from God, a way for us to confront the things that scare us the most and learn courage, strength, and peace. As a result, horror serves a vital, spiritual purpose. Along with helping people confront our fears and heal trauma, horror is a conduit to face darkness within ourselves and our own churches. 

Queer Horror

Perhaps the best example is the one where I began: Leviticus. 

When Naim confronts his mother about the healing, and meets another survivor, I saw myself, heard myself, in his voice. Leviticus is part of a growing genre of horror called queer religious horror that forces audiences to confront the real-life violence of Christian homophobia and welcomes survivors into narratives they recognize.

Researchers are beginning to take this seriously. At Aarhus University’s Recreational Fear Lab, scholars have found that horror fans reported greater psychological resilience during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they’ve identified a type of viewer they call “dark copers,” who use scary stories to work through anxiety and fear. “[I]t seems to be healthy for people to play with fear,” says the lab’s co-director, Mathias Clasen. Part of the appeal is control: Unlike the fear we can’t name or escape, a horror movie is a fear we can pause, look away from, or turn off.

Revenge Horror 

But horror can also be an outlet for our rage, holding space to safely process the darker parts of ourselves that we often suppress in a faith built on peace and self-giving. Confronting our own tendency toward and capacity for violence is a vital way to recognize and process our emotions while also funneling this rage into constructive and healthy outlets. 

One of the best recent examples also centers on religious abuse. Stephen King’s classic Carrie explores the psychological toll of Carrie’s mother’s religious intensity, especially surrounding her daughter’s period. In Mike Flanagan’s latest miniseries adaptation, Carrie once again faces her mother’s wrath when she asks about her body and breaks down when she starts menstruating, fearing that she is dying. But instead of helping her, the girls around her throw period products at the sobbing Carrie, film her breakdown, and share it on Instagram. It’s a stark reminder about the physical and psychological costs of cyberbullying but also the pain of religious punishment (namely Carrie’s mother forcing her into the prayer room when she asks her about puberty). The cost of bullying and repression explodes in the finale as Carrie takes revenge on the classmates who humiliated her online.

READ MORE: Satan Is Scariest When Subtle

For someone raised in a purity culture where my normal sexual development and attraction was demonized—and someone who was bullied growing up—Carrie’s story in television, book, and film format has always been a therapeutic release. Not only do we witness Carrie realize she has powers but also use these powers to enact her own form of justice, despite the fact that the consequences are horrific. It can often feel difficult, even contrary, to our faith to express anger (especially as people raised and socialized as Christian women), but rage, like fear, is a normal emotion, especially in response to religious, social, and cultural inequity. Horror stories like Carrie externalize internal and social pressures to help us all confront these feelings. 

Along with allowing people to experience fear and helplessness in a predictable controlled environment, horror media can also hold space for people to explore their own capacity for violence. This is not to condone any of what Carrie did, nor anything else that anyone does in a horror film, but to recognize that we all have violence within us, we all can be bullies and can hurt other people, and the consequences of this violence are very real for us and others. Don’t we do the same thing every Holy Week when we reenact the trial of Jesus and his crucifixion, when we feel ourselves pulled into or horrified by mounting mob violence against Jesus?

Religious Horror

But perhaps most importantly, horror is also a conduit for us to explore the darker histories within our own faiths. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how important The Exorcist (1973) has been to me. The film sparked a deep cultural interest in a ritual still practiced within the Catholic Church. As the niece of a priest and second cousin of an archbishop, it was the one horror movie that was off limits. When I eventually watched it, I was terrified that the film was at least partially rooted in a ritual that my family members were trained to perform, and that my loved ones recognized the realness of the demons and the spiritual tools they use to fight them. It made the film that much scarier, especially when I visited the infamous steps in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. 

Along with the film’s own legendarily cursed production, it is one of many other Catholic films whose horror parallels real-world violence perpetrated by the Catholic Church. Another more recent example is 2018’s The Devil’s Doorway.

Kathleen Holscher explores this poignantly in her 2022 piece in The Revealer, where she connects Gothic Catholic horror to Magdalene asylums, Good Shepherd “reformation houses,” and Indigenous residential schools. Holscher argues that the reason the onscreen horror is so terrifying is that it reflects the real-world violence through Church-approved and facilitated institutionalization, imprisonment, and colonization. Catholic horror films are a useful way for us to dig into these darker histories. For centuries, epilepsy and mental illness were often mistaken for demonic possession and treated with exorcism.

The 2005 horror film The Exorcism of Emily Rose is loosely based on the case of Anneliese Michel, a young German woman who experienced seizures, hallucinations, and psychosis (she had been diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy and depression), but her family was convinced she was possessed. So two local priests conducted 67 exorcisms on Michel. Michel eventually stopped eating and died, and in 1978, a German court convicted her parents and these two priests of negligent homicide. The Exorcism of Emily Rose is terrifying because her parents, priests, and community allowed her to starve to death under their care. 

Horror, therefore, creates meaningful ways for us to confront terrifying histories within our own religions, as well as the darker parts of our psyches. Instead of contradicting our faith, as Stuckey argued, the horror genre deepens it and invites us to consider the ways in which we all have capacities for hatred and violence. For those of us with trauma, especially religious trauma, horror itself invites us to relive some of our most painful moments and regain control, to tell ourselves “be not afraid” in the face of what we have suffered. 

Watching horror does not contradict Christian faith. In fact, it’s at the center of our salvation. “Do not be afraid” appears twice during Resurrection Sunday, one of the most horrifying moments in the Bible, first to calm the women who first encountered Jesus’s empty tomb and then later when he appears to them. The words are not to deny or criticize these women’s fear but instead to reassure them in a moment of fear and confusion. Even after the angel’s reassurance, the women don’t leave the tomb unafraid. Matthew 28:8 tells us they ran “with fear and great joy.” That’s what horror has given me too. Not the absence of fear. But the knowledge that it can come with something even stronger.

For those of us with trauma, especially religious trauma, horror itself invites us to relive some of our most painful moments and regain control, to tell ourselves “be not afraid” in the face of what we have suffered.