Horror Genre Research

Horror Genre Research

We decided to create our movie in the horror genre. This captivates audiences of our age 14-19 years old as we like to experiment with the unknown. The horror genre was created from 1890’s onwards, adapting to the times as it progressed, becoming more and more horrific. The horror genre is associated with developing a negative emotion from the audience and viewers by making the audiences primal fears seem real.

Horror came around from literature from authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, Bram Stoker with Dracula and Mary Shelley with Frankenstein. These were written to startle the readers and future audiences. Macabre (grim atmosphere) and supernatural elements usually feature in these literature or films. Horrors can overlap with fantasy and thrillers, and sometimes comedy.

When creating an opening sequence we would have to make sure we create the same macabre atmosphere and initialize the audience’s terror of the unknown. When researching plots with a horror genre, they usually consist of an unusual event, intrusion of evil forces. 

Regular fears consist of;

-       Ghosts

-       Aliens

-       Vampires

-       Werewolves

-       Demons

-       Gore

-       Torture

-       Vicious animals

-       Evil witches

-       Monsters

-       Zombies

-       Cannibals

-       Murderers and serial killers

Many horror movies generate from myth or true stories exaggerated. This scares the audience further as there is some element of truth which makes the audience feels anxious of how true the plot is. This has the audience thinking ‘What if…?’ which should be the element we need in our opening sequence.

1920’s

The era of silent movies.This is where the visual element of horror was all they had. Many supernatural movies escalated around this time, such as 'Nosferatu'. Many films came from gothic literature and myths and legends from Europe. Audiences were captivated by how ‘ghosts’ could be captured on film or how producers used lanterns for ‘supernatural’ experiences. The black and white technology of the times was played on, by making scenes darker with more shadows by doubling the filters. Audiences found a special interest in vampires at this time. Many of the conventions and filters are still used today. Many of the horror films produced in this time have been lost due to no way of copying and storing back in this time.

In this screen shot, we see a young woman playing with a pet cat. We associate cats with luck and other fates. They are seen as quite a give away in horror movies. This may indicate the young women is associated with magic for instance a witch as the connotations for a witch is to have a pet cat.

1930’s

This is the time when sound first came out, reinventing horror movies having a huge impact on this genre. The silent movies consisted of just visual arts, now contained more growls, grunts and horrific sound. Vampires and ghosts become less popular and monsters became a new fad. Sound became a new dimension for terror and music was experimented with to create tension or presence of evil. Basic sound effects were introduced into the cinema world such as echoing footsteps. Horror was created for escapism for the audience. During this time for instance, the Great Depression was in America, which made movies popular in this time for a few hours to escape the real world.

The movies started to create a sense of fantasy mixed with horror, taking the audience away from life as we know it. Now using deigetic sound, actors put on exotic voices to make the escapism more authentic. Again, the use of gothic literature sparked many of the movies ideas.

Audiences seemed more enthusiastic in this time period than 1920's as horror movies were becoming quite popular as time went on. This appears to be the case of wanting to forget the realism of global events and The Great Depression.

80 million people attended the cinema on a weekly basis, 65% of the population from the US. 

An example of a popular movie of this time was Frankenstein (1931).

The power of speech was new to the 1931's as seen in the above clip. By scaring the audience before hand was a way to put them in the right mindset for the movie. The way the introduction has been done, leaves the audience questioning what will happen that is so shocking in the movie. By using vocal in our main task, we could also put our audience in the right mind set, with the use of deigetic sound.

1940's

Wartime horror movies circulated America at the time as horror movies were banned in Britain due to Europe being busy with war and not importing or exporting anything they didn't need to waste money on. Also, Hollywood was the main audience for movies and film due to their culture so stayed mainly in this area for a couple decades before becoming worldwide. This was the time of experimentation, and limits due to the war having impact on many people's lives.

One theme experimented with at this time was animals and understandings of them. Films such as 'The Wolf Man' and 'The Cat People' became popular as this intrigued the audiences by seeing their own race merged with ordinary creatures, and revolted many people.

The Wolf Man (1941) became a huge hit to cinema screening. Producers trailed back to mystic mythology and started to look at werewolves and their legends, like they did for Dracula. The mise-en-scene widely used in this movie were a concoction of;

Silver Bullets

Full Moons

Pentagrams 

Gypsies

1950's

After war, many changes took place globally. We see this in horror movies from the 1950's. Horrifying monsters were done away with and a new era came to Hollywood. Horror movies started to place human faces on the face of evil, along with day to day creatures. This era was known as 'Creature Feature'.

World War II had left 40 million humans dead causing more damage to humans faith in humanity. Inhumane actions became a big discussion in this time period, questioning the horror of human actions. Due to war, many cinemas were left without customers due to soldiers being in their own state of horror from events displayed and wartime widows being wrapped up in their own world of horror.

In this time period, a new phenomena had occurred. The first ever sighted UFO in 1947 and following that the Roswell incident. This led to a new fear of the unknown in space and science, creating a window of opportunity for horror producers to scare their audiences. The line between real and fake, fact and fiction became thin during this time as audiences became wary of technological advancements.

This is where the age of B-movies starting booming. B-movies are low budget films of inferior quality were used as a supporting feature in a cinema program. The age of colour TV programs instead of black and white was becoming more and more popular, shadowing out movies. The top stars were being selected for musicals and classics other than horror movies, pretty much like today, meaning the audiences would rather watch an A-star actress over a B-star.

Audiences for horror movies took a rather large turnabout. Teenagers became the main audiences for these low budget productions, very much so like today. Instead of older audiences viewing certain actors with certain plots, many teenagers would hang around a drive-in movie and became a regular hang out area for these teenagers. The twisted creatures used in these movies seemed to captivate the experimental minds of teenagers, making them the main audience of this era.

Another key feature of this era was the Mutant Madness. As explained before, science was becoming a new and exciting thing. Radiation was a new movie feature, making creatures larger (such as Godzilla) or shrink (such as The Fly).Existing life forms made for better movies as they could be photographed using Blue Screen techniques or recreated in model form with stop-animation bringing them to life. 

Early attempts of this in films such as 'King Kong' were successful but wasn't widespread until this era. The cutting edge technology used worked well enough to draw audiences from their new found television sets, back into cinemas. Many of these plots have to do with a huge monster being on a rampage. A mad scientist is always the hero in these films as well. 

The fear eradicated from the use of atomic bombs. By being a new weapon, many people were scared of the bombs outcome. America had to deal with the mass destruction of an atomic bomb and soon after the fear of the world ending and many unanswered questions.

New movies were now being advertised on public television, gaining more of an audience. Movies were also starting to produce merchandise and advertising in news papers by showing the monsters and mutants as real images. Even with low quality sound and picture, the experience was something for someone to enjoy. 

An example of a prime movie in the 1950's was 'The Invasion of the Body Snatchers'. 

1960's

The sexual revolution. This was the year of great change, where horror perceptions took a huge turn. New things were approaching such as new hemlines for the females and homosexuality. Horror movies wanted to find a new way to perceive sex and violence in there B-movie films. New cinema chains such as 'underground cinemas' were experimenting with no scrutiny or censorship on what they showed to shock the audience further. This new decade brought a new opinion on showing nudity and onscreen violence along with it. These challenged society and caused an uproar. The main audience from the 50's were now grown ups and took no interest in false movie titles with predictability. The 50's audience, now growing older wanted movies more relatable, and more realistic to their situations as budding adults. They longed for more sophisticated aspects and the issues they face now in their modern world.

Even though this was one of the most tragic decades of this era, there was a certain sense of companionship, optimism and humanity was moving forward into a brighter future. The mutant monsters were a thing of the 50's where the radioactive technologies were a thing of history, making the monsters appear to be a bit stupid now. Aliens were also out of this area with no certified answer for if they exist or not or no further sightings. Horror movies had to now dig from the inside of society and out instead of scaring them with 'what if's?' Horror movie producers learnt they had to change their attitudes to suit the teenagers of the era, thus came along the mainstream audience for horror movies being teenagers as they associate with these age ranges the most. The idea of self image was becoming a theme for the 60's so producers thought, "lets scare these kids by making them the monsters and ruining their images...".

Night of the Living Dead was a major hit and a prime example of ruining body image for the teenagers of the 60's. The idea of the dead coming back to life was unbearable and that their own body image could be ruined because of the event. Night of the Living Dead had a budget of $114,000 to be produced. This promised to be the first of its kind horror movie which we see today with the main conventions; death, zombies and gore. Acting was becoming more realistic, make up was being more advanced and the special effects were now up to date a highly believable.

1970's

The 70's were known as the disappointing decade. In the 60's, moonlandings, sex and cultural revelations were feeding the society. In this decade, the whole 10 years seemed disappointing compared to the last 10 years. The humanity died and became the doom and gloom years, which only meant more bright ideas for the big screen. This marked the first outcome of high budget horror movies, addressing societies fears and individual psychological fears too.

A new development of the fear of children. More so, the pain and messy aspect of child birth. Many horror movies were based on the fact of birth control pills as they were new for this era so the movies express their fear for new medication.

Another fear was that a family member is a serial killer. This era revolved around paranoia. The new sense of having no humor in their horror movies.

One film showing the fear and paranoia in families is Alice, Sweet Alice (1976). 

The new feature of dolls and masks became a new feature as well. This is because they hold the same over happy expression no matter what. This creepy factor scares quite a lot of people due to the fake expression. Hidden identity paranoid many people thus masks scaring people too, usually with creepy factors such as doll faces or chainsaw masks.

The dolls also played on the fact adults started to fear children and their naive nature.

1980's

Special effects have now started to catch up with the gory realistic images of inside the human body. Advances in animatronics, liquid and foam latex meant movie producers could go further with bodily mutilations and distortion. This meant they could now show close ups without looking mediocre, scaring viewers and revolting them. Audiences wanted everything in a horror movie, the gore, the amazing plot and the amazing actors. This was where colour TV flourished and horror movies were higher budgeted. 

The audiences imagination became a large part of horror movies. Movies such as 'The Blair Witch Project' where they shown no monsters or scary conventions at all. It was all in the setting, the sound and the acting which still took people right to the edge of fear. The other aspect was the show the audience exactly what they wanted. Blood. Gore. Guts, to induce the audiences reaction of nausea but kept the audience watching just out of fascination. An experimentation was the allow audiences to watch a video of a surgical operation which induced the same feeling as the horror movies. There was a link between showing the inside of the human body and horror movies. 

Horror movies needed to find the balance between gore and shocking images. If they just shown gore all the way through, it would lose its meaning. Many films couldn't find this balance and became more of a teenage laughing stock. We wince because this is inside us as we watch the movie and this could happen to us. 

Zombies were still the main monster of the time, introducing the blood and gore aspect even further. These types of movies would rake in millions instead of thousands, showing the growth of love within horror movies and the new audiences. The main audiences of this time was the 15 to 24 year old category, looking for new thrills and competition between their friends. Sex still was present in these movies just like today as the slogan 'sex sells'. 

The Thing (1982) was the prime example of the human body and gore. There was some highlights where they were laughable moments instead of screams but the whole movie captured what the 80's was about with experimentation, science and the extent of the human biology. The slogan for the movie was 'Man is the warmest place to hide' hinting at the movies plot. 

Here we see the gore in action in the movie. Nowadays we would know this wasn't real, the blood colour is wrong and it just looks fake. Back in the 80's this was the real thing. The gore would send people rushing out the cinemas and the sight of something so inhumane would curdle everyone's stomachs. The setting only adds to the fear factor being based in the antarctic. A desolate cold place where no one can hear you scream if you were the only one alive... 

1990

The decade of serial killers, psycho's and murders. After the gruesome 80's, the effects worn off of the viewers. They seemed to fascinate and amuse more than scare and repulse. Zombies were now being mocked, they out lived their time. Killers and Cannibals were this decades fear. 

In the first five minutes of Scream (1996), we see the serial killer already making moves. The mystery created tension which producers found was the perfect recipe for horror movies. The new phone technology was becoming more advanced, finding the perfect way to mask identity and use this to scare people. By producers making the setting in a house, the whole globe could relate. By using house hold appliances, it shocked people into thinking anything can be used to kill someone with. By creating the horror in someones house, it haunted every for many months after leaving the cinema.

2000

Global convergence. This was the main focus of the noughties. In 2001, the events of 9/11 took place, capturing the globes attention. A new type of fear was eradicated for the 2000's, the fear of terrorism. Certain areas were affected by recession and the music industry was certainly affected. The movie industry became sensitive to what they could show without offending people. There was so much stress circulating companies, movies, and pretty much everyone, that there was even calls to close off the horror movie genre for the time being just for world peace at this time. But with a miraculous rebound, the horror genre was at its prime at 2005. Horror genre movies was topping the box office than any other genre on above average gross and below average budgets. Horror movies became a challenge between friendship groups on who can be the bravest, raking in massive crowds from again the ages 15-24 years. They use horror as escapism from the global issues dragging this age group down just as their great grandparents went to escape the realism of the War. 

The prime example of global terror is 28 Days Later. A very unconventional horror featuring in broad day light instead of the traditional dark shadow forlorn conventions. 

Many of the films nowadays follow this 'epidemic' feature as we become aware of the apocalypse. There is a pattern with today's horror movies, featuring a hell on Earth as everyone fears the unknown.