History and Significance of Horror genre

Horror, as it has been for a hundred years now, is basically to scare people. The main effects of a horror is to make people jump, feel nervous or be ‘creeped out’ by something that has or is happening. Horror writers use the exploitation of fear to make their moves more real and more able when it comes to frightening people. A horror movie cannot be successful if it doesn’t not induce fear into the audience and use it to its advantage throughout the movie.

Many people enjoy being scared. Most of the audience that watch a horror film enjoy the idea of a fright every once in a while and can be sometimes said to have the fear of the unknown, which is why horror movies with a jump/fright scene can be successful.— Horror is not the best genre for the amount of viewers that watch the movie; however it will keep the audience going to many more movies.

“There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie. Number one: You can never have sex… Sex equals death… Number two: You can never drink or do drugs. It’s the sin factor, it’s a sin, and it’s an extension of number one. And number three, never, ever, under any circumstances say ‘I’ll be right back’, because you won’t be back.” (Craven, 1996) This quote is taken from the Wes Craven film Scream (1996) Horror is arguably films most excessive, extroverted, and exploitative genre, (using in many cases, grim prosthetic effects, sudden bursts of sound or music, incredulous resurrections, and unnecessary scenes of nudity to surprise or confuse the audience) it also has a very conservative undertone different to most morality tales. This undertone contradicts the violent uncensored approach that most horror films adopt.

Horror in the Silent Era
It was from Gothic literature that the first horror films found inspiration, and why not? The genre was popular in both books and theater at the time. Although the term horror did not come into use for film until the 1930s, early filmmakers and film goers certainly showed an interest in the macabre as evident in this snippet of a “Spook Tale” from 1895 created by the Lumiere brothers.

1920s

It’s hard to overstate the effect that sound had on transforming cinema in the late 1920s. It was a radical artistic leap, and probably more so for horror than any other, just try turning off the sound on your favourite horror film – it just wouldn’t have the same impact.

1950s and past WW2
The period between the post-World War II years and the 1950s was perhaps the most difficult time Hollywood had ever gone through. From Supreme Court rulings ripping apart the studio system to a death match against television for patrons, this time period saw an increasingly protective Hollywood trying desperately to stay relevant. Horror films got relegated to strictly B-film status as Hollywood preserved it’s A-list talent for lavish epics. But the horror film was still popular with the teens who wanted thrills even if the plot lines were ludicrous.

 

The 90s and Modern Horror

Monster films turned increasingly to CGI effects for scares such as Species, and Anaconda...

Psychological Horror and Thriller have remained popular throughout the 90s and 2000s including films like Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Se7en, The Others and The Ring.

But there are three modern horror film cycles arose in late nineties and into the 2000s that are somewhat unique to our modern era. Torture Porn e.g. saw, cycle emphasizes intense gore, grunge and often tortuous violence.

The Blair Witch Project represents the first major film in the modern found footage horror sub-genre. However a copied idea from Cannibal Holocaust from 1980, The Blair Witch Project used the device of piecing together first hand footage to reconstruct the last terrifying moments of the original eye witness

And thirdly, the zombie cycle, Recent Zombie films feed our fears of a medical pandemic and the breakdown of society fears brought on by the financial meltdown in the mid-2000s. Still going strong with films like World War Z and the long form Television melodrama The Walking Dead, the Zombie Cycle may be seeing it’s fade out as comedic outings like Zombie land and Shaun of the Dead have poked fun at the formula.