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Answer!
I think horror survives as a popular genre because effective horror touches on conscious and subconscious fears. Things that we were taught to fear as a child are enacted in effective horror either literally or metaphorically. This, of course occurs in the relative safety of a movie theatre or on the television.
So one can confront the deep-seated fears of childhood a safe/protected environment. This causes a number of emotions for people - obviously fear, but also elation as one faces and defeats the ghosts of childhood fears.
Naturally, different films will touch on different fears, so individual films will vary in effectiveness between viewers.
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