Help me understand why people love scary movies?

I saw the trailer for The Strangers last weekend, and it got me to thinking about why people love scary movies. I’ve read theories that our daily lives are boring and banal, and getting scared helps us escape that. However! I had to close my eyes for the whole thing, and if anyone ever wanted to torture me into something all they would have to do is tape my eyelids open and make me watch The Strangers, or any of the Saw movies, or The Descent. I’ve also heard people say that scary movies like that don’t bother them because the things that happen in the movie wouldn’t happen in real life, but scary, horrifying shit happens all the time (the Frankel thing in Austria, the girl kidnapped, held in a closet, and tortured and raped by the members of a family, the real-life story Capote tells in In Cold Blood, etc.). I don’t understand why people would want to subject themselves to two hours of terror, disgust, shock, destruction, violence, and suffering, when there’s already so much of that stuff that’s real. So tell me, do you like scary movies? Why?