Reign of Terror

knowing what we see is purely vicarious. As a culture, Hollywood has been able to push the boundary of “acceptable” in horrors and thrillers over the years as viewers, directors, and actors grow desensitized to the subject matter. The fainting and terror experienced in the first screenings of Nosferatu are no more; the 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange, as directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on a novel by Anthony Burgess, features gruesome scenes of gang violence, murder, rape, drug use, betrayal,…

Tim Burton, a director of many classical movies, is also a man that was always preoccupied with death and monsters. In his movies, his use of color and low angles invoke an unusual contrast between fear and excitement. This is important because the movies show that appearances and the things the we believe in can be deceiving. In many of his films, Burton uses color in order to achieve the contrasting effects between fear and excitement. For example in Corpse Bride, the World of the Living is…

In this essay I will be talking about the connections between two different psychological thrillers. The two movies I have chosen are, Shutter Island directed by Martin Scorsese and Butterfly effect directed by Eric Bress, J. Mackye Gruber. Both movies have significant differences and similarities which made it a good choice to compare them both using filming techniques. Shutter Island is a film that’s main character is Leonardo DiCaprio, this involves himself as Andrew Laeddis, at the Shutter…

One of the first Asian Masters of Horror, Japanese director Nobuo Nakagawa offered up numerous exceptional horror films in the late 1950s and early 60s with scores of important and legendary titles. After several tales offering variations of ghost tales, Nakagawa decided to go for a more existential tale of remorse and greed which scored him one of the biggest hits of his career and secured his reputation with a vengeance leading to who he is today. Trying to move on in life, Shiro Shimizu…

Horror, mystery, and masterful storytelling all put into one author. Stephen King is a classic American author, who wrote the famous book and movie, The Green Mile. From wanting to start off as a school teacher to ending up being one of the America’s best selling authors, Stephen King wrote one of the most interesting horror books of all time. In The Green Mile, Stephen King, like most of his books, added mystery and suspense. Mysticism is when people use explainable things that are deemed to be…

Also, in Kill Bill, Tarantino works with the locations where it is hard to know with the places are real or they are CGI effects. This happens because Tarantino uses his editing style to create this feeling of fantasy mixed with the real actors creating an uncomfortable feeling which keep us asking to ourselves “What is real and what is not?” The props used are quite funny, because it reinforces this idea of fantasy. For example, in scenes when bodies start bleeding it feels like we are watching…

human or otherworldly parade through our nightmares and fears time after time. They appeal to our most primal fears. But what about these horrors and creeps truly makes them monsters? Exploring this question gives us insight into our fears and how terror plays with our emotions. Monsters are a common subject in both Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein and H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. In Mary Shelley 's novel the man Frankenstein creates his own monster by turning back death itself. In…

Critics: Movie Criticism People from children to adults criticize many things as they get older. In the world of film production, criticizing movies happens daily. Whether a viewer decides to dislike a particular scene to disliking the entire movie, critical approaches in literature will help us determine what type of criticism is taking place. In the movies such as Halloween, 300, and Frozen, criticism is done through description of scenes and by the judgement of the viewers. In Halloween, the…

It is a fascinating phenomenon that many people are fond of horror movies. To ascertain the underlying mechanism, Stephen King, the leading role in the field of modern horror fiction, indited this article “why we crave horror movies?” He analyzes with artful inditing skills from psychological perspective the possible reasons driving people to optically canvass horror movies. Some of his conceptions are very persuasive; however, it is hard to consummately concur with him on the points he made in…

Unlike horror films, action films are not produced to scare or frighten the audience. Some action films could be produced just for entertainment or to tell a story of which was true. Others could inspire or courage the audience to be that one person who acts like that “hero” type person in the film. The sub-genres of action films are epic movies, spy movies, disaster movies, superhero, thriller, martial arts, and video game movies. Some examples of action films are Braveheart, James Bond,…