The Horror Genre

Horror is a film genre which I am going to use in my short film of 2 minutes. Horror forces the audience to have a negative emotional reaction by playing on their hidden mental fears. Horror films are often scenes that frighten the viewer and make them ‘jump’. This may include supernatural paranormal, fantasy and thriller genres.

Bringing an evil force commonly of supernatural force into the real world; this makes it seem more real to the viewer, convincing them that this could happen to anyone. Evil supernatural forces/creatures such as ghosts, werewolves, demons, vampires, monsters, zombies, serial killers and vicious animals however films about the supernatural are not always horrific but more of a thrill.

A very famous and popular film I have studied and researched is Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (translated as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror; or simply Nosferatu) is a 1922 German Expressionist horror film, directed by F. W. Murnau, starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok. This film was shot in 1921 and released in 1922. It was an unauthorized adaptions of Bram Stokers Dracula which is a vampire with names and other details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to for instance, "vampire" became "Nosferatu" and "Count Dracula" became "Count Orlok"). Stoker's heirs sued over the adaptation, and a court ruling ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed. However, one print of Nosferatu survived, and the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema.

Here is the movie from 1922

Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster in Bride of Frankenstein (1935)  

1950’s-1960 

With advances in technology, the tone of horror films shifted from the Gothic towards contemporary concerns. Two sub-genres began to emerge: the horror-of-armageddon film and the horror-of-the-demonic film. 

Alien invasions and deadly mutations to people, plants, and insects. In the case of some horror films from Japan, such as Godzilla (1954) and its sequels, mutation from the effects of nuclear radiation were featured.

1990’s

In the first half of the 1990s, the genre continued many of the themes from the 1980s. The slasher films A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween and Child's Play all saw sequels in the 1990s, most of which met with varied amounts of success at the box office, but all were panned by fans and critics, with the exception of Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) and the hugely successful Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Coming into the 21^st century horror movies have come the popular than ever before. Here are some films from 21^st century: 

•  The Wolfman (2010)
•   Fired (2010)        
•   Piranha 3D (2010)     
•  Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011)   
•  Season of the Witch (2011)            
•  Insidious (2011)       
•  Haunted 3D (2011)         
•  Fright Night (2011)    
• You're Next (2011; widely released in 2013)
• The Cabin in the Woods (2012)         
•  Evil Dead (2013)                                                                                                               
•  Carrie (2013)   
•  World War Z (2013)