Horror films

claims that movies can contribute longterm effects. However, after analyzing certain features of film making, including the rating system, heavily personal and emotional data has led many to believe that movies have the…

Joan Gries Eng. Comp. 1001 6/24/16 Gender discrimination in horror: Gender discrimination continues to be a problem, even in today’s society. Even though our values have produced some changes, film makers still seem to regularly allow sexism and prejudice behaviors in their films. Films are quiet the ultimate expressive experience thus far devised by man. Invoking such sensory euphoric experiences that combines visual, audial, and emotions that simply engage us so deeply that perhaps we…

Why We Crave Horror Movies by Stephen King is a blunt explanation or theory put together by him on the subject of why we crave horror movies. In this excerpt, King explains what we do when we pay to see these films, as well as, why we do this. Horror movies are meant to take one on an emotional roller coaster and make them experience one, if not all, of their worst fears all in one setting. In reason as to what we do when we attend to see these films, King says, "..we are daring the nightmare…

at least the first recorded stories. But before we continue, when spoken of horror it is not all that frightens man, but all supernatural fiction with a dark side; witches, werewolves, etc. Folklore and religious traditions contain the roots of horror because of fictional characters, for example vampires, whom can be found in even the oldest of folklore. But the first horror literature that can be related tot the horror we have today can be traced back to the inquisition. In the early 1200s the…

and turn a profit. During this period a series of films from Universal Studios dubbed the “Universal Monster Movies” made their way into theaters and began to shape the Horror genre in America. These films, which were based on classic literature, featured foreign stars, had low budgets, and saw influence from German Expressionism, were met with financial success and audience approval. The Universal Monster Movies display a significant era in film history where a genre was shaped, not…

Hands clenched tight, clammy with sweat, eyes glued on the screen in disbelief as I begin to watch the red haired curly headed twin be eaten by a masked man in the uncanny visceral horror movie Dark Ride directed by Craig Singer set in New Jersey. This movie is about five friends, Cathy, Steve, Bill, Jim, Elizabeth and Jen, who while on a road trip take a slight detour to check out the infamous Dark Ride. A ride that has been closed for fourteen years became the blood dripping playground for the…

The current modern American horror films we have today are complicated creations of visual and technological marvels but do not have the cinematic quality of movies of old. In the past “modern horror is probably equaled among American film genres only by the western from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s” (Waller). As older followers of the genre examine the progression of horror they note “the genre has by no means disappeared” (Waller) but the genre is changing. The archaic form of censorship…

the horror genre. The standard way of thinking about horror has it that anything that has an R slapped on it upon hitting theaters is considered scary and more importantly off limits to children of young ages. Taking a kid to see the new Ouija movie would be frowned upon by a majority of society. At the same time that I strongly believe the social norm of keeping kids away from horror movies, I also believe that there are many movies out there that are not labeled as horror that contain horror…

What is it that we want to feel when we go to watch a horror film? Of course, we all want to be terrified, or at least we are prepared to be frightened in some way. But what is it that terrifies us, or essentially, incites in us some sense of horror? Is it the presence of horrible creatures, or is it the presence of ghosts, or other types of supernatural creatures, that scares us? Of course, the supernatural is in all these things. Human beings normally fear the supernatural because things…

In Why Horror?, Noel Carroll addresses two theories for why people watch and enjoy horror media. The first theory he discusses is that of H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft argued that individuals enjoyed supernatural horror because it established the feelings of awe and “cosmic fear”. He describes cosmic fear as an “exhilarating mixture of fear, moral revulsion, and wonder” (Carroll, 1990, p. 162). He believed that human beings were born with a fear of the unknown, which verged on awe, and that their…