The story plot in films such as “Edward Scissorhands” from well- known film director Tim Burton, have revolutionized over the years and have incorporated a large variety of visual and story line detail, in which viewers are far more intellectually challenged. There is no surprise that modern films have evolved an infinite amount of action compared to older cinematic films. Universal Horror films evolved between the 1920s through the 1950s. This involved incredible science fiction and horror films produced by Universal Studio Productions such as Frankenstein and Dracula to name a few. Over the years these gruesome fairy tales began to incorporate stronger detail and drama in their story plots.…
Stephen King, a talented horror fiction writer, published an article in Playboy magazine called “Why We Crave Horror Movies.” The author tries to prove modern day horror movies are a relief of violence and also can calm the negative nerves in the mind. In several ways these things can be related to real life situations. My relief of violence is dancing around in my room and reading my bible and horror movies allows us a chance to indulge in that sick imagination of ours so we do not act on them, as well as cage that “hungry” part in our brain.…
To begin this argument, people who enjoy horror films support that watching horror gives them a chance to learn, to experience situations. In an article “The Lure of Horror” published in November 2011, Dr. Christian Jarrett is the Psychologist’s staff journalist mentioned “Movie monsters provide us with the opportunity to see and learn strategies of coping with real- life monsters should we run into them, despite all probabilities to the contrary“. Dr. Jarret explained that horror scenes give people a chance to face with situations that may happen in real life so that people can handle situations or run away instead of standing and screaming. Similarly, Mathias Clasen says, “ That’s where horror can teach us something truly valuable” (Jarrett…
Due to the amplified “international” aspect in relation with the production of the Spanish horror genre, it is argued that level of internationalism apparent in contemporary Spanish horror greatly alters the narrative and form (Olney 378). While this is a valid point, I argue that the Spanish horror genre still maintains distinctive patterns and themes that separate it from the general Hollywood horror genre. Olney mentions two key patterns that are distinctive in these film, the centrality of children as well as a theme of antiauthoritarianism stemming from the Franco regime (378-379). In El Orfanato, the centrality of children can be seen in the characters of Simón and Laura’s ghostly childhood friends.…
The focus on aesthetics, or more commonly known, the admiration of beauty, might seem abnormal when discussing monsters, after all, a monster is known for its lack of beauty. Early myths portrayed the monster as something to be killed, a brute that may have resembled humankind, similarly as their divine beings did, however as opposed to being worshiped, they were consistently kept in the cemetery of crushed enemies. Over the years, the monsters of myths have moved from the iconic literary works onto the big screen of the cinema, permitting audiences to now see the creatures that were once only a culmination of descriptive phrases. The steady visual alteration of the Phantom and other monsters in film, has now disturbed the long-held hypothesis that claims that a monster's body is basically an embodiment of disparity bringing about one outcome, fear.…
As a result of his curiosity about the universe, Howard Phillips Lovecraft also philosophized that the existence of the supernatural is a possibility because the infinite cosmos has yet to be explored in its entirety. The monsters and otherworldly beings that Lovecraft writes of are not gory and do not evoke feelings of shock, but they are more so are disturbing in the fact that they remain inexplicable. Through his own mythology, he developed a fictional universe of supernatural beings that transcend all barriers of time and space. Writer Jess Nevins observes Lovecraft’s use of otherworldly beings in his writings by expressing, “It was Lovecraft who first created a fictional universe that anyone was welcome to take part in.…
In his discussion of Alien abduction narratives (AANs), Scott Scribner’s chapter section titled “Alien Abduction Narratives and Religious Contexts,” proposes that there are many religious aspects and common similarities between uncanny AANs and epistemological religious narratives (Tanminia, 2007). Scribner introduces the history of AANs and makes a clear-cut distinction between stories claiming abduction or ‘contact’, an important point, the author emphasizes. Moreover, Scribner analyzes the religious parallels and paradigms of Alien abduction narratives and reviews the context of the storytellers or ‘tellers’ of these narratives. Scribner describes that he does all this in an effort to understand how these AANs contribute to new found…
Horror as a literary genre is written with the aim of instilling feelings of terror, dread, disgust, or some combination of these emotions in its audience. This literature does so by capturing in its climactic scenes a fear found in all humans and centering action on the fruition of this fear. Edgar Allan Poe’s Ligeia focuses on the return of the fair Ligeia from the grave, an unnatural occurrence that shocks and horrifies its audience, but it is particularly shocking to the narrator of the tale for reasons other than his deceased bride’s unexpected resurrection. It can be posited that the narrator in Ligeia has formed a masochistic relationship with Ligeia. The ultimate moment of horror lies in Ligeia’s return not because she was once deceased,…
Human beings are emotional creatures. We can be happy, sad, scared, and angry all at the same time. Some can be described as overly emotional, dramatic, cold, and crazy, but just how accurate and exclusive or inclusive are these given stereotypes, more importantly crazy? “Why we crave horror films?” by Stephen King is about the underlying reasons human beings are so drawn to the production of horror films and rollercoasters, what they bring out in us, and why we keep going back for more. King argues that horror movies satisfy an important and essential human necessity of grim impulse and socially unacceptable desires in everyone.…
The stories of horror told in the modern world play up an extravagance of fright - the bloodier the scarier, the more demented the more impactful. In the Victorian times, such an approach would be off the mark, and quite foolish. As the authors of that day wrote for audiences of all ages, they wrote to create chills, not convulsions. The elements of fright that laced the various stories of the time were either common tropes or the unique twist of that trope. Those features carry on in today’s readings of the same work, and, despite our modern bloodthirsty craze for terror, create the horror found in each of the feature frights.…
Essay Response: Northanger Abbey The power of the Gothic genre lies in its ability to shock and terrify its audience Whilst the Gothic genre aims to evoke strong emotions from the reader such as fear, shock and terror, its power derives more from the lessons an audience learns than from the simple need to scare. Northanger Abbey differs from Austen’s other novels as it employs gothic elements in order to parody the genre. There is nothing shocking or terrifying in the novel, yet Austen still engages the reader with humour. The power of Northanger Abbey also lies in its universal themes of growing up, love, friendship and the position of women in a patriarchal society.…
Tod Browning’s Freaks flings itself in-between the different categories of Terror, Horror, and Revulsion, sometimes splicing and mutating the different categories into indefinable, unrecognizable, terms. Browning’s aim for his film is not to clear anything up, using the themes of: us vs. them, good and evil, humans and monsters, etc. to create understanding or enlighten people; and it certainly is not a film promoting the message, “Freaks! They’re just like us!” His intentions, rather, is to stir the witches brew, disturbing the layer of grime deep within us, bringing something to the surface, making us look at it in it’s bulging eye, and having us decipher or at least acknowledge the thoughts and reactions Freaks generates in us for ourselves.…
Why do we as a people fear monsters and similar entities? Throughout history people have created stories centered around monsters who would terrorize communities. These stories would be used to rationalize findings they couldn’t understand. These monsters were used to rationalize dieses, deaths and many other occurrences. These monsters still persist in stories today because over time they would evolve past what they stood for and would become symbols of our primal fears.…
For this final project I plan to write a short story based on the Horror and Suspense genre. I have been planning on making up my own storyline and characters to make the short story my own. I want to break off from the classic horror movie I am basing it off the “new” logic of what horror truly is, and the question I am asking is “What is true horror of this day and age?” I will be solving it through my story. It will be fresh and new, some will say it is a spinoff between multiple horror movies, but it is something that comes out of my own mind.…
Gothic literature is meant to combine plot points of horror, death, and romance in a thrilling story, or tale. The history of children 's gothic literature goes just as far back as storytelling goes, and is marked by both classic gothic and gothic children 's literature characteristics. Classic gothic literature involves : romance, good versus evil, heroes and damsels; whereas today children’s gothic involves high tech computers, texting, the blurring line of good and evil, school grounds. But there are still similarities between the two that make modern day scary stories a gothic spine shivering tale. These tales still have settings that are similar to the child, or so unknowingly different that it must be scary, they have creatures that happen to be grotesquely…