Why is that women love crime and horror, both in fiction and on film, more than men? This question arose quite recently as the result of overheard conversations in a pleasant suburban bar on a Sunday evening in early February.
In one corner a bunch of guys were sitting around their pints considering the brilliance of Sergio Aguero’s stunning equalizer for Manchester City against Liverpool, Kelly Brooks’ latest Tweet (she’s single again!) and Sylvester Stallone’s bizarre new barnet (A wig? A Rooney-esque transplant? Or just a trick of the light?).
In another corner a group of young women drinking Bloody Marys and glasses of wine were animatedly discussing not clothes or beauty products but the merits of TV shows such as Criminal Minds, CSI, Poirot, Midsomer Murders, Law And Order and NCIS and the latest Nicci French novel.
A similar phenomenon occurred around Halloween-time last year following the cinema release of the hit movie Sinister, a horror-mystery-thriller starring Ethan Hawke.
On that occasion, both genders were united in their enthusiasm and praise for the movie but, significantly, for different reasons.
While male audience members were applauding the film’s shock moments and its eerie and rather graphic murder sequences, female cinemagoers were raving about the criminal elements, the investigative procedure and the pleasures involved in attempting to solve the central mystery of the plot before Hawke’s character, coincidentally a true crime writer whose dedication to research places his young family in immediate and very serious danger.
But what is it that draws women, even more so than men, to such a grotesque subject matters as rape, murder, torture and serial killings?
It would be easy to play on stereotypes and simply ascribe it to the ideas that women like to solve puzzles, have a stronger desire than men to see justice done and are drawn by the ‘gossip potential’ of criminal behaviour – and the more salacious the better.
One can almost see and hear the female neighbours of convicted Suffolk Strangler, Steve Wright conversing over garden fences in the days following his arrest: ‘Did you hear about that bloke down the road? Well, I never. Who’d have thought?’
Interestingly, following a series of studies to try to determine if, in fact, women were more attracted to crime stories than men and why, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign came to the conclusion that women were drawn to true crime (in particular) out of their own fears of becoming a victim.
In their study, ‘Captured By True Crime: Why Are Women Drawn To Tales Of Rape, Murder And Serial Killers?’ authors Amanda M. Vicary and R. Chris Fraley suggest the reasons for women’s interest in the crime genre are based on a desire to learn how to prevent becoming and how to survive being a victim, how to spot the warning signs and to learn escape tips and survival strategies.
In the published work Vicary claims, “By understanding why an individual decides to kill, a woman can learn the warning signs to watch for in a jealous lover or stranger. By learning escape tips, women learn survival strategies they can use if actually kidnapped or held captive.”
Whether or not one agrees with these claims almost certainly depends on one’s personal viewpoint and one’s own reasons for liking (or disliking) the genres in question, but Vicary and Fraley’s findings, if accepted, would also go some way to explaining why women – and especially young women – make up such a large part of horror movie audiences.
Of course, all theories aside, in the case of a movie such as Sinister, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have someone like Ethan Hawke playing the lead role of a devoted husband and father and (no spoilers!) a potential victim.
Sinister (Momentum Pictures) is available now on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital Download.
