Scream: The Franchise Vs. The TV Series

As writers and producers saw the amazing popularity and success of the movie Scream many other copy cat versions were made. Movies such as I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend all followed the same teen slasher format. Nothing is being left up to the movie viewer’s imagination anymore. Everything for the past thirty years was spelled out and given to the viewer, leaving the identity of the killer as the only form of mystery. The genre of horror was losing a very important battle. The bone-chilling movies of the past were giving way to the comedic teen movies of the present.

Wes Craven’s 1996 Scream was a cult classic that people still enjoy today. It was produced by 2 separate companies, Dimension films and Woods Entertainment. The movie combines all the cliches in horror movies, and it also gives you the perspective of the victims and how they would react with the knowledge of horror movies plus their opinion of the horror movies. The movie centers around Sidney Prescott and her struggles dealing with her mother’s rape and murder, and the idea of her convicting the wrong man of the murder. Once 2 people from her school get murdered a reporter tries to bring up the idea that the same man who murdered her mother might be killing the kids in present time. By the end of the movie they reveal who “Ghostface” is, it turns out

Do you enjoy watching murder, the paranormal, and any other morbid scene which makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, your palms sweat, and your adrenaline surge? Why people enjoy watching murder, tragedy, and carnage in their spare time has been a mysterious phenomenon. If these gruesomely horrific scenes would not be enjoyable in real life, why is watching a recreation of it so riveting? Stephen King, a world-renowned horror novelist, wrote “Why We Crave Horror Movies” to give insight as to why horror movies, although gruesome and morbid, captivate audiences. King also aims to persuade readers to continue to watch horror movies, arguing that they are a crucial part of keeping sanity. King delves into this psychological aspect of humans and believes that the desire to watch horror films is a normal tendency of humankind. “Why We Crave Horror Movies” includes appeals to emotion, logic, and author credibility in order to convince readers of the positive, normal desire to watch horror films, why it is important to watch them, and why the reader should believe what the author is saying. King utilizes the rhetorical devices—pathos, logos, and ethos—in an effective way through the use of metaphor, logic, humor, and emotion to persuade readers that watching horror films is normal.

Insidious easily fits the film conventions of the horror genre and themes. Insidious incorporates classic horror elements like haunted houses, ghosts, children being possessed, and outside experts of the spiritual world. A family with three children start to witness things out of the ordinary and are unable to understand what they are seeing. The mother, for instance, knew she was seeing strange deities, but her husband refused to believe it and thought she was just out of it. The classic element of denying there is anything out of the ordinary going on is a classic horror element. Typically the people who deny the reality that there might be something supernatural happening, are the first people to be killed or affected in some manner.

In the 1984 classic, Freddy was about psychologically attacking his victims. He liked to play off of his victim 's fears and when they went to sleep he would bring their fears into their nightmares resulting to their demise. But in the remake, Freddy would attack his victims physically and in their dreams, he would constantly remind them of how he died causing them to develop insomnia. Also making them have psychotic breakdowns and killing themselves. In both films, Freddy Kruger preyed on the children of the parents that killed him. The parents decided to kill him because they believed he was molesting their children while he was working as a gardener at their children school. The parent burned him alive. That storyline remained constant in both movies. His favorite target in both movies was Nancy. There were some changes to Nancy in the remake, they changed her last name from Thompson to Holbrook. In 1984 Nancy was played by Heather Langenkamp and in 2010, Nancy was played by Rooney Mara.

In the sick minds of those who murder again and again, rape, pain and death are twisted into a passion to kill. Otherwise known as an ordinary individual, serial killers turn to violence and death in search of power over others, and to explore their fatal addiction to their immoral thrills. Even though these horrific crimes of a serial killer repulse most individuals, there is still a strange fascination when it comes to these deadly killers. I chose the movie The Lovely Bones to profile a serial killer.

Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer all have something in common: they are all known for their infamous reign of terror. Each one of these men, along with a long list of others, falls under the category of “serial killer.” A serial killer can be defined as a person who has killed three or more people over a month’s time, and, most importantly, has a cooling off period in between each of the murders. The topic of these murderers has always been a phenomenon all over the country. From the subject of a kid’s scary story to a major part of the film industry, the American audience has a shared hunger for violence.

As King argues, the horror genre serves a specific purpose to allow us an outlet to let out anticivilization emotions. These movies let us lapse into our most simplistic mindset, enjoying the pain and suffering of other people. As King says, “it urges us to put away our more civilized and adult penchant for analysis and to become children again...the invitation to lapse into simplicity, irrationality, and even outright madness is extended so rarely” (King 2). The human

John Carpenter’s Halloween is an example of what a great film composer can achieve with any budget. When it comes to film genres, Halloween has to be one of the greatest examples of what a horror movie is. Throughout the film, many of the story elements can easily be seen contributing to the idea of what makes a film fit in the horror genre. There are many horror films that stray quite far from the basic idea of what a horror film usually is; however, Halloween is a great example of classic horror. Typically, horror films have a set of basic guidelines or expectations that can be seen portrayed; such examples of what is to be expected in a horror film would be the presentation of a ‘monster’ or something that violates the natural world in a perverse way, something that is unknown, or that a monster is unintentionally unleashed, and the film takes place in creepy setting or suburban neighborhood/summer camp (slasher sub-genre). In Halloween, Carpenter brilliantly matched his film to the genre guidelines of horror. The variety of ways he did this can be seen in the presence of an unknown being which extends human knowledge, introduce the killer into the story by an accidental release from a facility, and depict the sub-genre horror being a slasher film.

It has always intrigued me how many people are very fond of horror movies. Heart racing, and terror acts, make the minds of many excited. I have always wanted to find out the cause to why many think like this, Stephen King, the leading role in the field of modern horror fiction, wrote an article “why we crave horror movies?”  He may have answered many of the unknow questions we have all wondered. He analyzed with an optimistic artful kind of writing skills from a more psychological perspective. He points at the possible reasons why people to want to watch horror movies. Although many think he may over analyze people, he may be onto a psychosocial phenomenon.

Throughout Wes Craven’s career, he took the horror genre to new and unpredictable places. Craven’s first film was The Last House on the Left in 1972 which he filmed and directed and only had the budget of $90,000. The Last House on the Left captured the mood of what was going on during

What makes something horrific or consternating lies largely in perspective. However, there are traits common amongst all works that are classified as horror, which are summarized or expanded upon by the philosopher Noe ̈l Carroll who wrote that horror can be seen as a want or need to know, and that horror can be subdivided into three parts: Overreacher Plot vs. Discovery Plot, introduction of a monster that challenges the conceptual schema, and the desire to overcome and learn about the monster at hand. Carroll’s concept of what eerily accommodates the horror genre can be seen universally, but, more specifically, her third idea on the want to know/expose a monster can be seen perfectly in the Duffer Brother’s Netflix series Stranger Things.

After a long battle with brain cancer, Wes Craven, one of the most influential directors in the past four decades, passed away on August 30 at the age of 76. Though Craven has passed on, the work he has done will forever be a mark left on history, especially the beloved movies he helped create that strengthened the horror genre when others thought it was dead. In order to honor the memory of Mr. Craven, we here at RATS Magazine have established a list of some of our favorite movies that Wes Craven has directed, written, or produced during his lifetime.

The genres relationship lies in the danger of human lives in an unfamiliar milieu. There is a threat to the lives of the characters whose fear and danger is a common element. The source of this can be from both humans and imaginary monsters. The horror films Psycho and The Mist both have humans as the real threat to the main characters. Schizophrenic Norman Bates in Psycho is a heinous, disturbed killer who dresses up in woman’s clothes when he is about to kill someone. The danger is first

"Both horror and science fiction explore the boundaries of what is means to be human (Belton, 272)." This is done by emphasizing the dilemmas of the figures who straddle the border of human and non-human (Belton, 273). Horror and Sci-fi contain narratives that take on a form of a search for knowledge that will enable the human race to overcome any obstacle that involves a supernatural force (Belton, 273); the story lines require a search or journey to resolve the issue. Horror and Sci-fi often overlap when there is a monster featured in a sci-fi film; or when a horror film is set in the future (Belton, 271). The two differ in purpose, horror, a sub-genre for sci-fi, was created to generate fear through a figure of a monster or supernatural being. While Sci-fi has a chief purpose of focusing on science and reasoning (Belton, 272). The development of both genres is created to a number of works done throughout the years. The improvement of special effects, influences from the original masters of suspense, camera angles, and heightened elements of the horror film genre has allowed it to maintain its popular demand amongst audiences for decades.