Essay on The Art of Horror Films

This open letter is directed at the directors of Horror films. This letter will discus the over used gimmicks and the lack of creativity on their part. It will be written in a conversational way with the use of pathos of how these movies are faulty with a touch of humor, and rhetorical questions to emphasize certain points of my discussion of this topic. I will also use ethos through my time as a film fanatic who is passionate on all that is film especially horror film which is my favorite film genre, and is the largest genre with so many subgenres within it that have the ability to use so much imagination. I have crafted this conversation to be directed towards the directors of horror films with the use of film lingo that is used for this genre, movie examples they should look at, and a deep analysis of what and how this problem cause movie of today to lack in appeal.

Having Halloween just around the corner the horror genre has been on demand. What is a horror genre? Horror is defined as being “an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust” and genre is defined as being “a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter” according to Oxford Dictionary. Therefore a horror genre is a horror film in one of the many categories in a genre that makes the audience feel fear, shock or disgust. Many of the films that everyone watches today are now called movies. Since scary movies have been requested, Netflix has even added a “Halloween favorites” on its search bar.

Genres are categorized in several ways. The use of genre is important in film because producers believe it would be good for marketing. There are different types of films. Action films is where the protagonist is involve in physical fights or chases. Adventure films involve the explorations the protagonist has throughout the story. Comedy films is mainly about humor. It makes the audience laugh by its comedic sense. Crime and gangster films is about the adventures of criminals or gangsters who break the laws, does robberies, and murder people who they despise of. Horror films involves the antagonist who kills victims in a terrifying and shocking manner. It causes the audience to feel uneasy and panic when murder takes place. Mystery films involves

In the essay, “Why We Crave Horror Movies” Stephen King attempts to explain why we love horror movies, and he gives a few different reasons why people go to see horror movies. People want to show that they are not scared; people want to have fun; but the main reason that he suggests is that we are insane and we need to watch horror movies to keep that insanity locked up in society. He uses a variety of argumentative strategies and literally decides to prove his thesis. On the other side, King surprised me by the reasons and comparisons he made and gave about why people watch horror movies, but then, the essay went off into tangents that I did not expect.

The older generation of writers such as Bram Stoker and Mary Shelly are known for German Expressionism. German Expressionism is responsible for creating The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari, which is still considered one of the greatest silence films created in the era. Ryan Koo (2013) claims the film also took credit for being one of the first to example story board and having a twist ending. Once the film had been created it lead people to explore the possibilities of the art of horror. Following the creation of The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari was the making of The Golem. This film continued to be remade over the years. Writters from New york State Writers Institute (2011) say it started with a man by the name of Paul Wegener. He was fascinated by the legend of the Golem. The story spoke of a giant clay monster that saved Pragues Jewish citizens for an emperor that believed they were ritually killing children.

The horror genre has held a prominent position in culture for most of history. Beginning in folklore, used as a device to scare children into good behaviors (e.g. The Grimm Brother’s Fairy Tales), horror has integrated its way into the 21st century through film, and in recent years even video games. Yearly, primarily during the fall when the leaves start to brown and the natural eerie sense of fear fills the air around Halloween, the film industry likes to fill in the holes between its major grossing seasons by filling the audience with fear. However, it was Christmas of 1973 that defined the new age of Horror, when William Friedkin released The Exorcist. According to Julia Heimerdinger of Academia’s online journal, Horror, as a whole, can

Horror is the most personal media genre because of how it can uniquely connect an audience to the traumatic aspects of human struggle. As a result, I like to define horror like this: horror is any instance when an audience is given an uncomfortable look at something that disturbs them. This definition is intended to give room for a cultural interpretation to horror; if something would have scared someone in the past because of something unique about their culture, it can still be considered horror. This is the primary vehicle with which I’ll argue that horror has existed as long as the English language has. Looking back at the medieval horror excerpts and Beowulf, there are many elements that would scare the audiences of their times that wouldn’t immediately affect a modern audience without thorough analysis. Because audiences in the Middle Ages were terrified of God, descriptions of hell and punishment were works of horror centered around fear of the divine. Likewise in Beowulf, in addition to containing an explicit, modern-esque monster in Grendel, Grendel’s Dam would have been seen as a horrifying figure because women were mostly used as negotiable objects for marriage in the 700s. In these ways, these works are evidence that horror has been around since before Frankenstein.

“The mythic horror movie, like the sick joke, has a dirty job to do. It deliberately appeals to al that is worst in us” (King 398). Stephen King illustrates that scary movies are there for the sole purpose of people releasing the inner demons, and in a safe way finding an adrenaline rush. Without these horror movies many people would have a difficult time finding new ways to release stress and to escape the realities of the world surrounding them.

There has been a large variety of horror films produced throughout the last fifty years. People are always going to be frightened and scared by different types of horror films. But, what type of horror film scares more people, and were men or women more frightened by these horror films? Each one of the horror films had its own agenda to frighten its audience using several different methods of horror. Some of these methods were more so directed at the female audience than the male audience. Most horror movies show the female as being vulnerable, because in real life females are defenseless against monsters.

They aim to elicit responses of fear or revulsion from their audience, whether through suggestion and the creation of mood or by graphic representation. Horror paradoxically provides pleasure, providing a controlled response of fear that is presumably cathartic. Stories of fear and the unknown are timeless. The biggest aim is to make money. But they play on basic concepts of good vs. evil. They make a formula out of promiscuity equaling a form of badness that ends in death while virtue and virginity means probable survival. They love to use basic themes that get exaggerated to create fears that are familiar and creepy.

Horror films have been around for over 100 years, petrifying people and bringing their worst fears to life but still they can’t get enough of this sick and gory genre that is unbelievably entertaining and captivating to the audience. Horror comes with many sub-genres from your bloody slashers like Friday the 13th to your Supernatural-Horrors like The Exorcist, but in the end they all seem to do their job by scaring you and leaving you with nightmares for weeks on end. Usually Horror’s films have the same character stereotypes such as the nerd, the jock, the slut, the virgin, the junky, the tough hero, the unlikely hero and last but not least the masked murderer, but yet they all play their own part in the making of these horrors movies whether it is the extremely slow walk the killer does but almost always catches the victim, or the unwise decision to split up and investigate where the unusual noise is coming from.

Silent horror films continued throughout the early 20th century. Some of the most famous horror films of this era included; The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), The Golem (1920), and Nosferatu (1920). These films feature a mad doctor, a vampire, and a monster that is never seen. (Wilson) These monsters were some of the very first to be introduced to horror but certainly not the last.

Horror films are like public lynching’s, according to King, because some of them conation graphic scenes and they cause fear. In the gorier horror films, there are a lot of deaths, decapitations, and a ton of fake blood spewing out of a recently murdered body. Therefore,

Overall, horror has been a universal theme that has captivated various audiences. Horror films have long served various purposes. They deliver thrills and chills, as well as tell stories of the dark, forbidden side of life and death. They also provide a revealing mirror image of the anxieties of their time. For instance, Nosferatu (1922) was not simply a tale of vampirism but offered a distressing image of a town besieged by premature and random deaths, which echoes the Great War. Therefore, horror films between the 1920s-1970s have reflected societal fears during their release and demonstrate important historical significance. The various films analyzed in this paper have represented what was happening throughout each decade beginning with

The horror movies of the past ten years of so have tended to be more violently graphic and visceral - a reflection of modern times, perhaps. Think of the blood and gore, of the violent deaths at regular intervals in such movies as the Friday the Thirteenth series, I Know