I outline and defend my position of moderate autonomism regarding natural-scientific explanations of film and the other arts, and criticize its principal rivals, film theorist David Rodowick’s extreme autonomism and film theorist Murray Smith’s anti-autonomism. In the first section, I illustrate moderate autonomism in action by examining the example of the startle response, which is our natural tendency to jump at a loud noise or abrupt and unanticipated change in our visual field and which is often exploited by horror and action films. In the second section, I challenge Rodowick’s extreme autonomism by demonstrating that natural science can and has revealed important facts not only about lower-level features of our engagement with film, such as the “illusion” of motion imparted by cinema, but also the higher-level features that Rodowick is concerned with, principally the meaning and value of films. In the third section, I challenge Smith’s anti-autonomism by contesting his assertion that natural science is always required to fully explain our engagement with cinema. In general, I criticize Smith’s notion of a “thick” or “full” explanation, arguing that explanations should be judged “complete” relative to the research question we are asking.