EM.8: Deep Dive – Part 5: At the Movies Raw “Gut Feeling”

Approximate reading time: 3 minutes

Are you ready to go back to the movies again? Imagine you’re sitting in a dimly lit movie theatre, the screen flickers, and an image slowly comes into focus. As the scene unfolds, you find yourself gripping the armrests. There’s no overt threat, no menacing music telling your body there is something to be afraid of. Yet, you feel an unmistakable sensation of dread. This is the power of cinema — to elicit an emotional response that doesn’t require a narrative to explain why you feel the way you do.

Consider a scene where the camera navigates a narrow hallway. The walls are covered with peeling paint, and the floor creaks with each step. There’s a heaviness to the air itself, almost like a silent character in the scene. You haven’t yet learned what waits at the end of that hallway, but your heart races. This reaction is not born from a cognitive appraisal of the situation; rather, it’s a “raw gut feeling”. It bypasses detailed understanding and leaps straight to emotional experience.

Your brain is responding to a collection of sensory stimuli: the visual details, the sounds, and the implied tension communicated through the director’s choices. Like Zajonc’s (1980) theory suggests, you’ve formed an instantaneous emotional reaction without a detailed, cognitive interpretation of the scene.

This kind of emotional response is rooted in the neuroscience of emotions. As you watch the scene, your amygdala is activated, responding to the potential threat suggested by the cinematic elements. The dread you feel is part of an emotional response that doesn’t necessarily involve the higher cognitive processes of your cortex. You’re not thinking about why you should be afraid; you just are.

As the film continues, you’ll encounter moments where the narrative provides context for your emotions, but this initial, raw fear is visceral and immediate, demonstrating the concept that some emotional responses in the realm of movies are as direct and unmediated as the perception of a sudden flash of light or a loud noise in a quiet room.