Preview

Horror Genre Essay Example

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
886 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Horror Genre Essay Example
Film Genre Report
Horror is considered an ancient art form, delivering thrills and telling stories of the dark and forbidden side of life and on the contrary, death. Horror’s most far back influences go to the year of 1235, where ideas of witchcraft took position in these ancient societies, it wasn’t until the seventeenth century these beliefs amongst society faded. By the 1400s artists begin producing paintings of a nightmarish impact, and illustrations and tales of supernatural forces begin publishing. Development continues throughout time and by 1800 ‘Wake Not the Dead,’ by Johann Ludwig Tiek becomes the first known English vampire story when it is translated from German. By 1910 the first Frankenstein movie is made, with Thomas Edison having much input, and as the expansion in technology continued we have seen the production of many horror films in our society today.

The top 5 Horror films of the 21st Century include Jurassic Park, The Sixth Sense, Jaws, I Am Legend and Ghostbusters, with these films engrossing millions for their production. Horror films attempt to extract the emotions of fear, horror and terror from viewers. Their plots frequently involve themes of death, the supernatural or mental illness and include a central villain.

When comparing old horror films to new films, it is evident that the films reflect the social, cultural and technological values of their time. When evaluating the 1963 film The Birds, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, there is much proof of how the values and attitudes of portrayed within the film may be seen as anachronistic in our contemporary society. The film shows social values such as the women in the film being in danger, typically known as a “damsel in distress.” The woman is unprotected and cannot fend for herself without the help of the strong, masculine man within the film. When comparing this to a new film such as the 1999 film, The Sixth Sense, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, the typical social ideas are

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    To start off, the most obvious aspect of the horror genre that is in this film is vampires as they are a supernatural creature. The Vampires in the film are what you would expect; blood-sucking beasts with their sharp teeth, which sleep upside down, cast no reflection and who are afraid of sunlight. But that’s not all of it.…

    • 690 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Movies are much more than just a picture on a screen. They are not linear, they are complex and have depth beyond our imagination. One of the most critically acclaimed master of this art is Alfred Hitchcock. The movie describes the events that occur when a small town is attacked by vicious birds. The movie “The Birds” by Alfred Hitchcock has a deeper emotional weight with its audience than the book “The Birds” by Daphne du Maurier because of Hitchcock’s deliberate use of setting, imagery, and mood in the cinematic experience.…

    • 1468 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The theme of deeply ingrained values is also present in A Nightmare on Elm Street…

    • 341 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Bram Stoker’s Dracula debuted in Victorian England at the end of the nineteenth century. Not the first vampire story of its time, it certainly made one of the most lasting impressions on modern culture, where tales of the supernatural, horror, witchcraft, possession, demoniacs, vampires, werewolves, zombies, aliens, and monsters of all kinds have become something of a theme in modern art, if not an obsession. Many scholars debate the origin or cause of this phenomenon, yet most agree that culture plays an enormous role in the development of such themes, whether in nineteenth century gothic novels such as Dracula or Frankenstein, or in modern films with gothic leanings, such as The Exorcist or Children of Men. This paper will examine how fantasy and the idea of the supernatural, including the “undead,” is an important underlying fear prevalent in the psyche of humanity, which manifests itself differently, depending on the social or historical circumstances which spawns the creation of that work of literature or film.…

    • 2536 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Horror movies bright out the demon in everyone. Normally someone would not be rooting on a person getting sawed in half with a chainsaw or getting stabbed in the back with a knife in the shower. In Steven King’s Why We Crave Horror Movies he discusses why people love horror movies so much. Of course, some people are not a fan of horror movies. Not everyone can handle the jump scares and gore, however some people can sit and watch the massacre for hours. Horror movies supply people with an adrenaline rush and a sensation of fear while bringing out the sociopath side found within everyone.…

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The 19th century reader of the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was treated to a tale of fantastic proportions. A story of a monster that was created from parts of corpses and could be brought to life would have been an extremely scary story. They would not know if the creation of a monster in this way was really a scientific possibility. The 21st century audience however, now knows that this is not scientifically possible. The fear that was struck in the hearts of the 19th century reader by this monster is now gone. With this in mind the story of Frankenstein now has to be altered to conjure the same fear in our current society of that which existed in the hearts of the original audience. In Hollywood's remakes of the original novel the monster is not the same monster as was in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Hollywood has used aesthetics, science and dehumanization of the monster to turn the story of Frankenstein into movies that would reflect our current society. This essay will strive to draw connections from the original text, empirical research and Hollywood's modern day film remakes of Frankenstein to demonstrate how the monster has been changed and turned into a monster that our society can understand.…

    • 2723 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Gothic Horror is a term used to depict fictitious work that has incorporated a lot of horror scenes as well as elements of the unreal world, exploring the conflict between good and evil and dealing with the supernatural in some sort of way. The episodic novel Dracula written by Bram Stoker in 1897 and the movie Blade by Stephen Norrington created in 1998 bring to the fore many conventions relating to the Gothic Horror genre despite their vastly different contexts. Gothic elements of imprisonment, eccentricity and death are clearly represented through each of the texts. Stoker and Norrington present these conventions through a variety of literary and film techniques, paying particular attention to character and setting to explore the elements of the genre. Through these interactions, the audience can feel a sense of Gothic Horror in which the composers of the two texts aim to convey.…

    • 1346 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Literature and film has been a large part of horror for a long time in history. Horror has been in literature since early 1200s because of the book called Inquisition. The book was largely inspired by religion and witchcraft. Film in horror started with the first horror film Le Manoir Du Diable by a French filmmaker named Georges Melies, this film was only two minutes long. Hopefully, in this paper you will learn about the history of literature and film in horror.…

    • 529 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Horror movies test us on our fears, desires and mentality. As from the king’s thesis, “the reason we all crave horror movies is because we are all mentally ill”. That gives a point that we need to watch horror movies just to release our tension.Some people prefer horror movies for a different reason. They want to prove to themselves that they are brave and that they fear nothing. People always try to prove certain things true when they are not that sure of themselves. Even though they choose to watch these things, the images are still disturbing for many people.But people have the ability to pay attention as much or as little as they care to in order to control what effect it has on them, emotionally and…

    • 740 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Halloween Movie Analysis

    • 1241 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Its director managed to apply the low budget and brilliant cast and create one of the best works of American cinematography. The most essential thing in this film is not its terrifying effect but the thought which it provokes. It does not resemble thousands of other horror movies because of its ability to render the particular idea to the viewer. Despite the fact that John Carpenter portrays the deeds of the psycho, they still have the hidden truth. With the help of this movie, the director has manifested his viewpoint on life, its laws, and possible aftermath. This movie was his inner response towards the sexual revolution and debauchery, which dominated over human moral dignity and ethics in the 1980s. The director showed that human actions have consequences and that people have to take this fact into account. People’s life is in their hands, and each individual is responsible for the aftermath of his or her…

    • 1241 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    For those who prefer horror films tend to really love to be frighten or grossed out of their mind. They also really like the suspense and anxiety horror movies offer.…

    • 95 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The rain fell down like tiny stones upon the weathered roof. It’s a gentle shower just now but the forecast said it is to get worse. The rain was making the atmosphere even darker and stuffier than usual. Save this. It is a normal Saturday night and as usual parents are out for some “time to themselves” I don’t have any brothers or sisters and I’m not aloud out because of the weather, so I’m left in myself for the night.…

    • 1029 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The American Nightmare

    • 277 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In Robin Wood’s “The American Nightmare, Horror in the 70s,” it exposes the theory of how horror films are generated. According to Wood, horror films exemplify how repression comes in conflict with normality and brought to existence, and the effect it has on society. Repression is the rejection of thoughts or impulses that conflict with the standards of our society. Wood discusses many key points that our mind represses such as sexual energy, female sexuality, bisexuality, and children’s sexuality. In a horror film, the monster symbolizes either repressed feelings or the fears of society. The monster of the film also represents “otherness”, which is what society represses in one’s self and then projects onto another inferior part of society to be hated. Normality in horror films is “the heterosexual monogamous couple, the family, and the social institutions that support and defend them.” Society as a whole is a member of “patriarchal capitalist society” or “social norms.” Wood demonstrates that these components connect to make a horror film. He generated a basic formula to horror films with three variables: the monster, normality, and how they relate to one other. The correlation between the monster and normality are fundamentally the subject of the horror film. Wood also outlined the five recurrent motifs since the 60’s. These motifs are what society fears and represses. “Annihilation is inevitable, humanity is now completely powerless, no one can do anything to arrest the process.” Horror films embody the fears we have in ourselves and in society. We repress what is abnormal in society because we know that ultimately it is ourselves who do not want to become…

    • 277 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Throughout human history there have been many literary genres to come and go. Some were entertained by the general public while others may have had a critical reception by a marginally smaller audience (or minority). Though what remains the same, across the board of all genres, there is the thirst for imagination as well as the fulfillment of human curiosity. Albeit relatively new, both fantasy and horror (also respectively different) are successful and popular as genres, for they are able to satisfy the basic human emotion of curiosity and are able to cater towards the human imagination. Sigmund Freud explains how children’s role-played imaginative worlds become suppressed adult fantasies and are therefore tended to go through various mediums; literary fantasy being among one of them. Horror has been able to capitalize on the human’s natural curiosity for the unknown, or death, by bringing its audience as close as possible to it. Although the horror and fantasy genres are different with respect to their content, they share many similarities as to why they (and many other genres) are so popular. Their deep psychological impact on human curiosity and imagination has been just as relevant to both sets of their audiences.…

    • 1936 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    People who prefer horror films obiously like to be grossed out or like to be frightened. The horror fans usually tend to enjoy suspense and anxiety. One might suspect these people love to go on frightening roller coaster rides or do other thinfs that would cause suspense and anxiousness. People of this nature might also enjoy things that most people would not, considering the amount of gore produced in many horror films. For example, some people watch surgeries purely for fun. While others, like myself, would become sick even thinking about cutting someone open. Horror films are infact unsetting films deisnged to frighten and panic, cause dread and alarm, and invoke our worst hidden fears while doing it in a shocling yet entertaining way. People who preferably enjoy these kind movies are usually intrigured by such things as nightmares, vampire, werewolves etc. Sometime its even the simple thrill of our vulneravilty, alienation, and cliques such as “the terror unknown that draw these people to the horror genre.…

    • 654 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays