In Why Horror?, Noel Carroll addresses two theories for why people watch and enjoy horror media. The first theory he discusses is that of H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft argued that individuals enjoyed supernatural horror because it established the feelings of awe and “cosmic fear”. He describes cosmic fear as an “exhilarating mixture of fear, moral revulsion, and wonder” (Carroll, 1990, p. 162). He believed that human beings were born with a fear of the unknown, which verged on awe, and that their attraction to supernatural horror only provoked that sense of awe inside them and confirmed that the world contained several unknown forces.…