Ms. Zelez bristles at the cliché that women only go to scary movies as an excuse to cuddle with their boyfriends. "I have girlfriends that love gratuitous violence, blood and gore and people getting carved to pieces," she said.

She is right about one thing: The number of young women buying tickets to the bloody new wave of horror films is striking, and even Hollywood executives say they are surprised. "Saw II," in which a sadist imprisons victims in a house and poisons them with gas, drew more women than men under 25 — the target age group for horror movies.