You've Got Mail, The Holiday and Love Actually. These are but a handful of films that I have watched time and time again.
You probably have that one title, too, that you return to when life feels heavier than usual. Or maybe you have a list of films that are part of a seasonal routine. A Christmas movie you put on every year without thinking about it. A summer flick that brings to mind a specific chapter of your life. Or even one you hadn't thought about in years, but that still brings comfort.
You know every scene and you know how it ends, but that is exactly the point.
Here’s the thing about memories: the brain does not file an experience like it does, say, a photograph. It captures the entire context, from what was happening around you to the emotional state you were in at the time.
A 1975 study at the University of Stirling was one of the first to explain “context-dependent memory”, by showing that people recalled information better when they were in the same environment they learnt it in. Further research extends this to emotional states and the feelings you have during an experience, and how these get attached to the memory itself.
As such, when you return to something from an older time, your brain does not just retrieve the memory; it begins to reconstruct the feeling that came with it.
“Context-dependent memory means the brain encodes experiences along with their emotional and environmental background. When you re-enter a similar context, like watching the same film, overlapping neural patterns are reactivated, making the past emotional state easier to access,” says Dr Najwan Al-Roubaiy, a clinical psychologist at Beautiful Mind Medical Centre in Abu Dhabi.
Familiarity breeds comfort
For years, I assumed I just prefer older films. But as I started reading the science, I realised my choices may have nothing to do with quality, but are rather part of “predictive coding”.
The idea, as developed by University College London, is that the brain is constantly anticipating what comes next, building predictions and updating them when something unexpected happens.
When you watch something unfamiliar, that process runs at full intensity. However watching something you already know means the brain has run this simulation before. And when that happens, according to Dr Al-Roubaiy, it starts to wind down.
The threat-detection systems go quiet. The body shifts into “a rest-and-digest state”, which only kicks in when the nervous system feels genuinely safe.
There is also something else at work, he says. Knowing what comes next, being able to say the lines before the character does, predicting the plot turn you've seen a dozen times, all create a feeling of being in control.
For me, a feeling of familiarity takes over when I watch something from the early 2000s. Even places I have never been to, countries I have never visited, feel oddly like home.
Researchers at Aarhus University referred to the “reminiscence bump” in 2014, a pattern in which people tend to have disproportionately vivid and emotionally significant memories between the ages of 15 and 30.
The explanation is that this period coincides with the formation of identity, the accumulation of first experiences, and a level of emotional intensity that the brain encodes more deeply than quieter periods of life.
Window to the past
It explains something else I have noticed: the movies I return to are neither from my childhood, nor from last year or the very recent past. Rather, they are from a specific age window.
When we watch an old, familiar movie, we gain access to past versions of ourselves. I felt most at peace in the early 2000s, perhaps because I was experiencing many things for the first time. Or maybe because I simply spent entire summers just watching TV.
Either way, I built a real sense of connection with movies released at that time. I wanted to grow up and have a life like that of my favourite characters. As an imaginative kid, I assumed that was exactly where I was headed.
I think what I'm doing when I rewatch them is trying to revive that part of myself. To remind the child in me that she is now in control, and that the life she was imbibing through the screen is one she could actually aspire to now.
Dr Al-Roubaiy calls this “emotional scaffolding”, explaining that it is several things happening at once: autobiographical memory being retrieved, mild reward activation and emotional regulation. It goes some way in explaining why inhabiting a favourite character for two hours makes me feel, briefly, more like myself.
Real versus reel
Most of the time, this sense of instant gratification is not problematic. Dr Al-Roubaiy is clear that, in moderation, this is a healthy and adaptive form of self-regulation. There is nothing wrong with reaching for something that gives your nervous system a rest.
However, he adds that there is a thin line between regulation and avoidance. If returning to old films starts to consistently replace engagement with new experiences, or becomes a way to escape rather than process difficult emotions, its function shifts.
From a cognitive behavioural perspective, there is also the risk of “mental filtering”: remembering old films as flawless, bathed in the warm light of context, while unconsciously holding every new experience up to an impossible standard.
The concern is not the habit itself – a behaviour Dr Al-Roubaiy describes as the brain reaching for well-encoded, predictable patterns to regain equilibrium – but rather whether the habit quietly starts to close you off.
A happy balance is allowing your brain to use a well-worn neural path – something familiar from a more settled time – in a bid not only to channel a past version of yourself, but also to return to solid ground when life seems to be pulling you apart.
