Do you remember watching scary movies when you were little? You would sit close to your parents and hide behind a pillow, covering your eyes enough just to barely see. As people grow older they either love horror movies or they hate them. There is no inbetween. As the years have progressed horror movies have gained popularity. They attract young adults, teenagers, and the occasional middle age group. In the 1930’s horror movies attracted middle aged adults rather than young adults. People were attracted to the films for reasons like: the history of horror movies, the popular movie Dracula, and the appeal of fantasy. “The 1930’s marked the golden age of horror films as audiences sought relief from the economic hardships of the Great Depression and found solace in fictional cinematic frights. The decade became recognized as a high-water mark for Hollywood horror, with the creation of iconic monsters and beautifully crafted films.” (Avinger, Charles). Movies in general became popular around this era because of the hardships. Due to the amount of positive feedback from audiences, Hollywood decided to produce about 6 more Horror films. They decided to …show more content…
Allowing people to access their deepest fantasies and creating wonderful cinematic works. Horror movies truly do play a role in our history that most people do not think about. They have brought people together in times of need and providing hope for a better life, by making people realize that their lives could be so much worse. Little do we realize that our everyday fears were most likely brought on by some sort of horror film we have seen or heard about. They have also provided endless entertainment throughout the years. The entertainment has been provided through books, films and sometimes even songs we hear. In conclusion, horror films have greatly impacted the American
The horror genre of film captives the frightfulness of individual fear, horror is the only genre that is meant captive the terror of the audience. The horror- the genre has been around well over one hundred- years there has been an extension of different types of horror and how the audience perceives horror. Many would even argue that horror films often reflect the fear of society in that certain time period. The evolution of horror reflects the evolution of society’s fear. American in 1929 face the stock market crash-inducing The Great Depression.
To begin with, some people would say they enjoy a horror movie that gets them scared out of their wits. They go see these movies once a month on average, for fun, each time choosing a newer sequel like “Final Destination” or “The evil Dead”. King says “When we pay our four or five bucks and seat ourselves at tenth-row center in a theater showing a horror movie we are daring the nightmare” (405). As a writer of best-sel...
Audiences love to be scared. Horror films attempt to find some sort of trigger in the audiences mind, and develop it to create horror. Preceded by the great horror novels such as Dracula, and developed in the early nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties in Germany. From slash movies, to the post-modern psychological thrillers, horror films have evolved into an art form. This genre relies heavily on the basic horror conventions.
Through the talkies in the 30’s little changed (except sound). The 1950’s and 60’s focused on sci-fi, B movies and Hammer horror, often known as the ‘Atomic Phase.’ Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Alien at the Arctic Circle and The Thing (1951) are good examples. Horror then switched to witchcraft and zombie films such as Night Of The Living Dead (1968) and Day Of The Dead (1985). Conventions changed, we now had more suspense, people being trapped and spiritual terror. Towards the end of the era we also saw an increase in the amount of violence and gore but this was nothing compared to what came next.
Some would say watching horror movies and being scared out of your wits is a fun way to spend their hard earned money. They go see these movies on average once a week, each time choosing a newer version of a trilogy like “Chucky” or “The evil Dead”. Film making has come a long way over the last few decades, the graphic...
The article Why We Crave Horror Movies by Stephen King distinguishes why we truly do crave horror movies. Stephen King goes into depth on the many reasons on why we, as humans, find horror movies intriguing and how we all have some sort of insanity within us. He does this by using different rhetorical techniques and appealing to the audience through ways such as experience, emotion and logic. Apart from that he also relates a numerous amount of aspects on why we crave horror movies to our lives. Throughout this essay I will be evaluating the authors arguments and points on why society finds horror movies so desirable and captivating.
Often times I wonder if people go to see horror movies for enjoyment, or is it something much more than that? I have mixed feelings about the idea that, “the horror film has become the modern version of public lynching” (King 562). Horror movies do promote violence and can influence the mindset of the audience, but sanity people is not based on the excitement we receive from watching a horror film. Instead, it is based on what is already within us, not what we witness on a movie screen, but what we experience throughout our lifetime.
Film scholars around the world agree that all genres of film are part of the “genre cycle”. This cycle contains four different stages that a specific genre goes through. These stages are: primitive, classic, revisionist, and parody. Each stage that the genre goes through brings something different to that genre’s meaning and what the audience expects. I believe that looking at the horror genre will be the most beneficial since it has clearly gone through each stage.
People are addicted to the synthetic feeling of being terrified. Modern day horror films are very different from the first horror films which date back to the late nineteenth century, but the goal of shocking the audience is still the same. Over the course of its existence, the horror industry has had to innovate new ways to keep its viewers on the edge of their seats. Horror films are frightening films created solely to ignite anxiety and panic within the viewers. Dread and alarm summon deep fears by captivating the audience with a shocking, terrifying, and unpredictable finale that leaves the viewer stunned.
Horror movies were reborn in the 1930s. Unlike the dreamlike imagery of the 1920s, the films were peopled by ghostly wraiths floating about silently, horror films in the 1930s were replaced with monsters that grunted and groaned and howled. Horror films in the 1930s were all about monsters. The 30s monsters were exotic and were non-human. Many of the films from the 30s were based on literary classics of the 19th century, often set in far off lands with characters in period costumes speaking in strange accent. These films focused on monsters and involved brilliant makeup. These monsters were zombies, freaks, mad scientists, a mummy, an invisible man, werewolves and ghouls.But audiences were distanced from these films because they couldn’t understand the monsters belonging to world’s that weren’t theirs. Most of the the monster movies of the 30s were made by Universal Studios. Rival studio, RKO-radio pictures, the smallest major film studio, needed to make a profit after their disappointing film “Citizen Kane” which had not worked very well. They were in finance trouble so Val Lewton was fired to make cheap horror film for easy product. He had to keep the budget under $150 000. He was
We live in a society where a life of another human being is losing value by the minute, murder is almost more common than marriage, and monsters no longer lurk under our beds but inside us. Even sadder, this is acceptable; this is our normal. When we are children, we have an indescribable innocence; we are invincible. As we grow up, life happens, and we go through hardships that break us. Stephen King says it best with the words “sometimes inhuman places create human monsters” (Stephen King, The Shining) It is in the battle of finding ourselves in the process of trying to pick up the broken pieces. We tend to feel our losses more intensely than our gains- the exact reason we often see the walls we build from our past and not the strength gained in our experiences that aid us in our futures. We all have both good and evil in us, and we become the one we choose to act on. The majority of us choose to represent our good side, the more socially acceptable choice, but some fall victim to their darkest self. However, in order to survive in our society, we generally act on the good in us, and in order to maintain the good, we must feed the bad sometimes. This Is why I agree with Stephen king on his view of why people like horror movies?
The Horror Movie in Late Modern Society’ that labelling films such as these as postmodern may be an overreach. He argues that the hybridity of the genre as seen in horror-comedies such as ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ and ‘Scream’ are nothing ‘new’ and that comedy has always played a prevalent role in the horror genre. He goes on to state that, “much of the comic fun to be had (in contemporary horror-comedies) derives from the excess of gory detail. The other aspect, in this case more a development characteristic of the 1990s than the 1980s, is the tendency to reflexively generate humour by openly appealing to a knowing audience’s familiarity with the genre conventions.” This view suggests that Tudor views the emergence of a more comedic element to horror movies as more of an evolutionary step in horror, than a deliberately postmodern outlook. He cements this as his view as he uses the example of ‘Scream’ and the films made in its wake (such as ‘Scary Movie’ (2000)), Tudor claims “It is films such as these that have so often attracted the designation ‘postmodern’, if only superficially, because of their studied self-consciousness and their use of pastiche.” (Tudor, p.107) Tudor’s view is that films such as these bear only surface-level post-modernism that the term is used too liberally and the films would be better suited towards the term parody than a post-modernism. Tudor argues that their “studied self-consciousness” disqualifies them from being labelled as postmodern, however it can be argued that parody and self-consciousness elements of these films are what make them postmodern at
Stephen King, a very well-known writer and director, has a passionate voice when it comes to anything dealing with horror. In “Why We Crave Horror Movies,” King calls us out for knowing that we love the adrenaline rush and how we are so captivated by horror movies. He explains how we watch horror movies for the level of fun. King proposes that we go to defy ourselves; to see how far it can push us and that is what makes the experience so interesting. We lock our inner psycho from reality and feed it with the demonic, bloody violence found in horror movies. Doing this suggests that horror movies are our fix for our psychotic thoughts. Stephen King’s “Why We Crave Horror Movies” portrays that we are all insane in some weird way through
Although scary movies can be hard to watch and get all the way through without leaving the room or closing one's eyes through the heart pounding scenes of a serial killer slowly chasing people down a hallway. There are some great benefits of watching a scary movie such as being put in a good mood after watching through a whole scary movie, Immune system boosts, as well as burning the calories consumed from the overpriced snacks that the movie theater sells.
Some people may argue that horror movies are in fact beneficial because of the brain’s coping mechanism to deal with the sensation of watching the horror movies. When watching horror movies the brain feels as though it is enveloped in the situation along with the main character. The brain feels the need to react to the situation as if it were actually living the situation; regardless of knowing that what is happening in the movie is not real. According to WebMD, this is because the brain has not properly adapted to the idea of a movie (Sine). People believe horror movies to be beneficial as it causes the brain to secrete many different hormones such as adrenaline, dopamine, and serotonin. Fear has since helped us survive for thousands of years (Don’t be Afraid). However capitalizing on this primal reflex may be detrimental to the health of the viewer as it creates a false sense of reality in the their minds.