What is Horror?

Jaspreet Bhatoa

Horror Definition

Horror is a film genre seeking to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the

audiences primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer, and the macabre and the supernatural

are frequent themes.

Horror movies have evolved over the decades, adapting to each new generation and preying on (or catering to) their fears. The launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik resulted in a lot of movies about alien invasions. The birth of nuclear power lead to a rash of films about

mutated animals, insects and people.

And so it goes today. While the fixtures of the genre - ghosts, monsters, madmen and demons - remain

unchanged, they are now presented in new, innovative ways. Vengeful spirits emerge from computers and

zombies are created by viruses in biotechnology labs, reflecting our current fears, and yet whatever the origin,

the result is always the same - carnage, insanity and death. Some things have changed in horror movies, but

some things never will.

Horror Evolution

The Basics

There are three essentials parts that make a Horror film; the iconography, themes and the structure. The paradigm

for the most successful horror films are the setting/location, characters, sound, the villains and the

weapons/ props.

Setting/locationA good horror movie has an unidentified location. The location tells the audience exactly where they are going to find a serial

killer or ghost. Once you see a movie that captures a location well, the

audience will fear to going any location that may resemble it. If the location doesn’t relate to the genre of the movie, then it

doesn’t scare the audience and therefor hasn’t fulfilled its true purpose. With Horror films the settings/ location are always similar, as they tend to be in big dark empty houses, woods, attic/basement and big buildings, this is because they elicit a

feeling of isolation and therefor fear within the audience.

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CharactersIn horror films there are always the stereotypical characters;

The female; she is the person that will last through the whole movie because she is a virgin. She is probably the

first character introduced in the movie. The wise guy; also known as "the smart guy" .The wise guy is usually either the most likeable or most annoying character in the movie. He's

either the first or last to die. The jock; this guy is simply there to be killed. He contributes nothing in the way of

comic relief or suspense. The cheerleader; the cheerleader is more likely to be killed as she might sleep with a lot of boys making her sinful. The killer; the supernatural killer

who keeps coming back and who really doesn't have a pertinent connection to any of the other characters.

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Sound

To have a successful horror film it is necessary to use the right sound effects. Traditional horror films have fairly

predictable soundtracks which can be used by the audience to identify the genre. It is easy to predict when the frightening parts are about to take place, based on the foreboding tunes played immediately beforehand. There is another technique that directors like to use,

which is playing the music immediately before the scary part, then ending it suddenly (providing the audience a false sense of relief) and then resuming it immediately, just as the next “shock” appears on screen. Truly scary

films are excellent at creating a mood that isn't too obvious. For instance, in the movie 2003 “Thriller”, high

tensions, the director limits the use of sound so the killers footsteps creaking against the floor are literally magnified

and enhanced throughout.

Villains There's a certain fear that the audience will feel when

they’re up against the unknown. It frightens the viewer to see a murderer behind a generic mask, by playing up on

the idea of the unknown. It makes the villain seem inhumane because the audience has no idea who or

what's under the mask. For a good horror movie its best to have something unnatural about the killer or ghost. If there’s nothing unnatural about these killers/villains then the audience will start to associate them as being just an ordinary person, whom there is nothing to be frightened

of.

Weapons/ propsThe weapons that serial killers use in films has a really big

impact on the audience. The kind of weapons that the villains use to kill is directly related to their persona, for

example a thoughtful villain who would do a lot of planning before murder would use something precise like a sharp knife. A villain who is more spontaneous wouldn’t be so precise or caring and would use something far more gruesome such as a chainsaw as in “The Texas chainsaw

massacre”. The directors want the audience to feel a certain way about the gore they are seeing on screen. The most common weapons that are used in horror films are;

the butcher knife, hooks, the chainsaw, the Axe and ropes.