Reign of Terror

Palms sweating, heart racing, blanket clenching. Have you experienced this chilling feeling before? Every person has a limit to their willingness to watch horror films. Some people get a thrill out of watching horror films while others avoid the experience altogether. Humans try to eliminate fear from their lives, but fear in moderation is beneficial. While fear is often an emotion people tend to avoid, some actually embrace it as a result of fear creating feelings of joy and a rush. Fear…

We live in a world of signs, and of signs about signs (Hawkes 2003). Signs and symbols are used everywhere. They are read on people, paintings, books, television and even films. The main focus of this essay will be on films, focusing on the horror genre specifically. The use of semiotics within films is something that has been happening from the birth of films, even if we didn’t know about them, they were still there. Horror films in specific take advantage of signs and symbols, which mean…

IB Biology HL: The Effect of Various Movie Genres on Heart Rate in Teenagers Defining the Problem Recent studies have show emotions have been found to have more physical effects than previously thought. Respiration rate, heart rate, and blood pressure are just three of the characteristics that are affected by a person’s emotions. Media such as art, music, literature, and film is very influential in how people feel at a given time. If emotion is induced through these influences, the change in…

Crimson Peak by Guillermo Del Toro is a visually stunning and technical masterpiece. It has taken me a while to perceive it as that. As a viewer who has been exposed to the trailer before watching the movie, I left the theater disappointed and wanting more out of this horror movie. It wasn’t till plenty of research that I found that Crimson Peak is in fact not a horror movie. Correct, but is it any surprise that the director of Hellboy, Pan’s Labrynth, and the Devil’s Backbone, was able to…

In her study ‘Films as Cultural and Emotional Measures,’ Kristen Leder provides interesting insight into the emotions connected to film and how this affects viewing choices. Leder utilises qualitative material to analyse the vernacular criteria through which viewing choices are made in regards to horror films, for instance, specific textual content such as media violence, or the ‘emotional investments’ subjects anticipate due to preconceptions they had of specific films (284). Unlike previous…

Suspense thriller is one of the subgenres of a film that is popular for its excitement and tension. It usually includes crime scenes that trigger audience’s curiosity. Not only that, it also has been known to give a sense of tension that can cause the audience to feel uneasy and disconcerted. One film that can be taken as an example is a film titled Fracture (2007) by Gregory Hoblit. This film tells about an attempted murder case of the wife of an aeronautical company owner named Ted Crawford…

Turn off the sound while watching a horror movie. Watch the asinine teenager investigate the door, creaking open by some haunting force. Scared? Probably not. The horror movie genre feeds off of brilliantly unsettling soundtracks to terrify the audience, peeking through their hands as the creature emerges from the hollow darkness behind the girl. Even the great director Alfred Hitchcock alloted much of his movies’ successes to the clever use of the soundtrack, like the screeching violins in the…

When people imagine monsters, they think of mythical creatures, the fantasy of an old wise tale. As a matter of fact, some people believe in the life of mythical creatures. The monsters in Beowulf are described as demons, and represent horror. But maybe there are other than just mythical creatures in our world, that may even have the same representation as the monsters in Beowulf. While not physically destroying a memorial place like Grendel does to the Heorot Hall, but brainwashing a nation and…

Violence is a commonly used theme that has various ways it’s represented in fiction and film. Brutality allows films and stories to move forward through endless suspense as each part is a surprise. However, when you add violence and comedy together, you get a suspense-filled story with random moments of comical relief before or after a violent moment. “No Country for Old Men” and “Good Men Are Hard To Find” showcase an up-and-coming genre filled with both violence and comedy that creates a new…

7 best psycho-thriller movies from Hollywood that are can make you go inquisitive. Psychological thriller movies tend to fascinate a lot of viewers with developing a feeling of suspense, moods of anxiety, fury and confusion at the same time. The audience of the film are trying to figure out what’s next and then there’s a twist where comes a feeling of exhilaration. The extent of creating intrigue and mystery in which mind-games are involved leading a person to become inquisitive about what’s…