What is a horror film?
The idea of a horror film is an unsettling experience for the audience. They feature scenes that are unpleasant for the views with scenes including vigorous amounts of blood. While watching films the audience educe emotions of disgust, anxiety and trepidation.
The main story lines which the horror genre has are nightmares, people’s worst fears, super natural; however many have a plot which the story line is based on a serial killer or a disease which brakes out.
Plots written within the horror genre often involve the intrusion of an evil force, event, or personage, commonly of supernatural origin, into the everyday world. Themes or elements often prevalent in typical horror films include ghosts, torture, gore, werewolves, ancient curses, Satanism, demons, vicious animals, vampires, cannibals, haunted houses, zombies and masked serial killers.
The base of a horror film has varied over the years. Now we consider a horror movie something in which makes the audience jump and has gore and blood. Horror films have changed drastically changed since the late 17th century; most horror films from that era are based on supernatural events. One film which has been credited as the first horror movie is, Le Manoir du diable in which super natural events occur.
The change in horror movies has changed considerably since the first horror movies. Now the makers of films prefer to use plots in which are very close to real events and the scenes are gorier and use a lot more graphic scenes. The story lines will sometimes be very twisted and will be unimaginable, for example, the storyline of Hostel, where people pay to torture and kill other people, we can't imagine that happening in real life can we? The films usually are based around things people would generally be scared about, things that would be their worst nightmare. However the story line of the young graduates going to foreign country is imaginable, so people can relate to the sub plot of the movie. A popular storyline to use, is one that deals with phobias, such as spiders, this can cause distress to a viewer that may have this phobia, however, some people may not have this phobia and would just see it as a scary film. Other films may deal with evil forces, and religious themes, these are very popular, as they can be seen as slightly more realistic, because there are a lot of religious people in the world that may see these films as a reality.
A good horror films will make the audience go home and think about the scenario of the characters of the film and think it could happen to them. And example of this is Piranha, where the remake came out in 3D in 2010. The situation of the students who have finished spring break are out celebrating and are attacked by the flesh eating fish. Although the scenario is almost impossible situation to be in, the audience are frightened to enter the sea after watching the film. The reason the film had such a success was because it was a remake of the critically acclaimed version in 1978. The stereotypical things the teenagers get up to is a good basis to entice young viewers as they understand its a remake, and may think it is ‘old’ as it is a remake; but the 21st century settings , props and actors use make it likeable by the new audience.
Although Piranha is a horror movie, the scene and the setting differs from other horrors as the lighting is high key and it’s a beach with bikini clad women. The film is a different type of horror as it deals with a flesh eating mammal as it is not alike the mainstream horrors where there is a psycho murder of a masked murderer.
When filming a horror movie, to create the dramatic effect, the directors use low key lighting, which creates a dark and mysterious aura. Low key lighting is also used when creating the trailer and the raw images to use in the film posters and for the film magazines. This is a convention in the horror genre. The darkness matches the mood of the film. If they used really bright colours to advertise a horror film, it wouldn't work.
There are many different sub genres in the horror genre, for example:
· Thriller Horror
· Japanese Horror
· Splatter Horror
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