Development of the horror genre

Development of the horror genre

Horror movies are one of the few core genres in which people are interested in since the beginning of the movie era.  Horror movies are created with the aim of creating fear and negative emotions in the audience. They usually rely on scaring the viewers, centering on the dark side of life. The main topics of horror movies are usually the arrival of an evil force, a person, or an event, and they feature mythical creatures like ghosts and vampires. Also, horror movies are filled with violence and gore, making the audience more afraid, awakening more fear. Although horror is a genre on its own, it can easily overlap into other genres such as fantasy, thriller and sci-fi. Given the fact that horror movies look back to the beginning of the movie era, there have been many developments and changes in the genre. In this paper, I am going to introduce the main stages of horror movies with the most significant examples, and elaborate on the main point of development which occurred during the more than one hundred year history of the horror cinema. (Dirks)

The first horror movie ever created was Le Manoir Du Diable (The Devil’s Castle), made by Georges Melies in 1896. It was only two minutes long, but it contained many symbols that later horror movies used, such as a medieval castle, a demon, skeletons, and a crucifix. The first full-length horror movie (Notre-Dame De Paris – 1911) was created by a female director, Alice Guys, in which the main evil was Victor Hugo’s Quasimodo. The first wave of popular horror movies became the Vampire movies, including the Hungarian film Drakula halala (The Death of Drakula) directed in 1921, which is the first movie adaptation of the original vampire novel Dracula. However, the first original vampire movie was Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror which was directed by F. W. Murnau. It is important to note, that this film was also based on Dracula, however the protagonist was renamed to Nosferatu, and he was moved from Transylvania to Bremen. Apart from vampire movies, monster movies became popular too. The most important ones in this category is Frankenstein (1910), The Golem (1920), and the Phantom of the Opera (1925) (Dirks)

Secondly, we cannot leave slasher movies unmentioned when we are talking about the horror genre. In this subgenre, the main source of fear is a ruthless murderer. The forerunner of this genre was Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), which features some iconic and recurring elements of slasher movies. This subgenre reached its peak in the early eighties, given that the movie Halloween came out in 1978, which inspired many other directors. Classics such as A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and Friday the 13^th (1980) were created in this period. (Cwik)

In comparison to this, modern horror movies are the complete contrast to this. The main difference between old and modern horror movies is the approach it takes to scaring the viewer. As I have mentioned archaic horror movies, especially the slasher movies, relied on brutality and gore to scare the viewer. This is not the case in today’s horror cinema. It is more of a psychological horror that it is causing to the viewer. In most cases, it is not the murder which is in the centre, but the way the evil ‘plays’ with its victim. A few examples for these kinds of horror movies are The Ring (2002), Paranormal Activity (2007) and The Conjuring (2016). In my opinion, this is the main point of development of the horror cinema, and also, it makes these movies more acceptable to society, by which I mean that it is not only brainless murdering.

To sum up, horror movies have been always hugely liked by the public. Not many can look back to such a colorful and long past in the cinema history. Even though the method changed, the aim remained the same; causing fear and terror to the innocent and naive viewer.

Works Cited

Cwik, Greg. http://flavorwire.com/422455/why-the-slasher-movie-was-the-quintessential-80s-horror-subgenre. 29 October 2013. Article. 9 12 2016.

Dirks, Tim. http://www.filmsite.org/horrorfilms4.html. n.d. 5 12 2016.