Love Quote by Barry Watson

Watson is doing something shrewdly unpretentious here: he reframes horror not as a niche taste but as a bodily craving people are reluctant to admit. The key move is that hedge - "even if they say they hate" - which nods to the social stigma around enjoying fear. Plenty of people treat horror as lowbrow, sadistic, or emotionally unsafe; Watson suggests the louder the rejection, the more likely it masks a private fascination. It is less an argument than a recognition of how taste works when shame and pleasure share the same room.

His language stays stubbornly physical: hairs rising, a chill, the spine. That matters because it sidesteps the usual defenses people put up about "plot" or "craft" and goes straight to the genre's actual product: controlled physiological disturbance. Horror becomes a kind of emotional gym, a safe place to stress-test the nervous system and come out feeling paradoxically cleansed. He also slips in a confession - "I mean, I love it" - that functions like permission. If an actor, someone whose job is to inhabit fear on cue, can admit to enjoying it, the audience gets a social alibi.

The context is a culture that constantly packages anxiety (news, true crime, doomscrolling) but rarely admits the attraction. Watson points to the honest part: we don't just endure fear; we curate it. Horror is where that impulse becomes legible, and even a little thrillingly sincere.