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.

In this book, Abigail plays as the murdered pregnant teenager. Abigail was described to have long brown curly hair. In a lot of the scenes of the book her hair was mentioned as a detail. Some examples from the text include “ As she lay in the morgue I curled a strand of her hair on my finger...”. “ I remember when we used to play soccer, and the wind would rush through the curls in her hair…”.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

“By the early 1930s, horror entered into its classic phase in Hollywood - the true Dracula and Frankenstein Eras.” (Horror Films) The original Dracula was released in 1931. Dracula was a five hundred year old vampire was that was very frightening to early audiences. This undead villain entranced and charmed his victims with his veracity.”(Horror Films) The 1930’s also brought the first production

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,

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.

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

Horror movies generally are all the same. They all have been based off of something that has already happened or a previous movie. Society has paid to be entertained by these gruesome stories that we all truly fear. Before movies, people would purchase books of similar traumatic events to read in their spare time for amusement. It has been said by the Filmmakers IQ's horror film lesson (2012), that writers such as Bram Stoker created graphic novels that would grab the audience's attention for years to come. But the horror movie, The House Of The Devil (1896), was noted as being the first ever horror movie. And as the years pasted, the industry grew and became stronger. But Ryan Koo (2013) stated that it was not truly until after WWI

him or her involved in the film - how often have you been watching a

Horror movies. The type of genre that gives a thrill of adrenaline, yet also gives nightmares late at night. Everyone has watched a horror movie at least once in their lives. And during the movie there is also a time in which the viewer just wants to punch the TV screen and call it quits. Whether it is because their favorite character just did something dumb, or because the ending was horrible, there is always a moment in which one thinks: I would have chosen a better option. I could have survived. In literature, it is often the same thing. Believe it or not, fear is a huge contributor to how the story goes; how it ends, and who dies. Fear either motivates the character to take action or, defeats them. But fear doesn’t act alone. Fear influences people, but what influences the fear? The answer is quite simple, no matter how shocking it can be. Just as love brings happiness, it also brings forth the poison of fear. Whether it is the fear of losing the person they love, or fear that they are no longer loved, both of them are huge contributors on how a character’s actions or decisions are influenced.