Horror film

• 1. Defining The Horror Genre

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  Max Schreck as Count Orlok in the 1922 film Nosferatu set a template for the horror film, according to critic and historian Kim Newman. Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit physical or psychological fear in its viewers. Broad elements of the genre include monsters, apocalyptic events, and religious or folk beliefs. Before the release of Dracula (1931), the ideas and terminology of horror films did not yet exist as a codified genre. In 1913, the magazine Moving Picture World defined horrors as showcasing striped convicts, murderous Indians, grinning black-handers, and homicidal drunkards. Some titles directly suggested horror, such as The Hand of Horror (1914), which was a melodrama about a thief who steals from his own sister. During the silent era, the term horror was used to describe everything from battle scenes in war films to stories of drug addiction. The mystery film genre was then in vogue, and early information commonly promoted Dracula as a mystery film, despite the novel, the play, and the film relying on the supernatural. Mark Jancovich wrote in the book The Shifting Definitions of Genre: Essays on Labeling Films, Television Shows and Media (2008) that horror was virtually synonymous with mystery as a generic term. Andrew Tudor wrote in his book Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie that genre is what we collectively believe it to be.

• 2. Cinematic Techniques And Music

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  Jacob Shelton investigated in detail the many ways that horror films manipulate audience members. Negative space can draw viewers' eyes to anything in the frame, for example, a wall or the empty blackness in the shadows. Anna Powell explores how horror directors use cinematography to induce certain viewer reactions. Lighting extremes, whether bright or dark, can prevent viewers from seeing every detail in a scene, which provokes unease. Bright lighting might also trick viewers into feeling safe. Distorting space and time can confuse and disorient horror film viewers. To confound viewers' senses, directors might use tilted camera angles and shots in slow-motion or reverse. Directors also use colour, through costuming, setting, and lens filters, to communicate mood and evoke certain connotations. Red, for example, might convey blood, passion, or disease. The jump scare is a horror film trope where an abrupt change in image accompanied by a loud sound aims to surprise the viewer. Mirrors are often used in horror films to create visual depth and build tension. Tight framing and close-ups are also commonly used; these can build tension and induce anxiety by not allowing the viewer to see beyond what is near the protagonist. In his book Music in the Horror Film (2010), Lerner writes that music in horror film frequently makes us feel threatened and uncomfortable. Dissonance, atonality and experiments with timbre are typical techniques used by composers in horror film music.

• 3. Historical Evolution Of Fear

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  Horror films have existed since the early 20th century. Early inspirations predating film include folklore, the religious beliefs and superstitions of different cultures, and the Gothic and horror literature of authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley. From its origins in silent films and German Expressionism, horror became a codified genre only after the release of Dracula (1931). Many sub-genres emerged in subsequent decades, including body horror, comedy horror, erotic horror, slasher films, splatter films, supernatural horror, and psychological horror. The genre has been produced worldwide, varying in content and style between regions. Horror is particularly prominent in the cinema of Japan, Korea, and Thailand, among other countries. Despite being the subject of social and legal controversy due to their subject matter, some horror films and franchises have seen major commercial success, influenced society, and generated popular culture icons. In discussing narrative trends in horror, scholar Isabel Pinedo draws on the book Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie (1989) to map the development of the Anglo-American horror genre. She points out that early synchronized sound, as well as post-war period films, present threats to social order as external, while human agency largely prevails. The focus is on the monster's acts of violence and the characters' failed attempts at resistance, ending with male experts using violence or knowledge to defeat the monster and restore social order.

• 4. Subgenre Taxonomy And Themes

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  Body horror is a genre that emerged in the 1970s, focusing on the process of a bodily transformation. The earliest appearance of the sub-genre was the work of director David Cronenberg, specifically with early films like Shivers (1975). Mark Jancovich of the University of Manchester declared that the transformation scenes in the genre provoke fear and repulsion, but also pleasure and excitement such as in The Thing (1982) and The Fly (1986). Slasher film is a horror subgenre which involves a killer murdering a group of people, often teenagers, usually by use of bladed tools. Following the financial success of Friday the 13th (1980), at least 20 other slasher films appeared in 1980 alone. These films usually revolved around three properties: unique social settings, a crime from the past committed, and a ready made group of victims. Folk horror uses elements of folklore or other religious and cultural beliefs to instill fear in audiences. Frequently cited examples are Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), The Wicker Man (1973), The Witch (2015), and Midsommar (2019). Natural horror features nature running amok in the form of mutated beasts, carnivorous insects, and normally harmless animals or plants turned into cold-blooded killers. Alfred Hitchcock defined a new genre nature taking revenge on humanity with The Birds (1963) that was expanded into a trend into the 1970s.

• 5. Global Regional Variations

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  In a study done by Uri Hasson et al., brain waves were observed via functional magnetic resonance imaging. It was shown that audience members tend to focus on certain facets in a particular scene simultaneously and tend to sit as still as possible while watching horror films. In another study done by John Greene and Glenn Sparks, it was found that the audience tends to experience the excitation transfer process which causes a physiological arousal in audience members. The ETP refers to the feelings experienced immediately after an emotion-arousing experience, such as watching a horror film. Audience members' heart rate, blood pressure and respiration all increased while watching films with violence. Only about 10% of the American population enjoy the physiological rush felt immediately after watching horror films. A 2021 study suggested horror films that explore grief can provide psychological benefits to the bereaved, with the genre well suited to representing grief through its genre conventions. Skin conductance responses, heart rate, and electromyographic responses vary in response to emotional stimuli, showing higher for negative emotions in what is known as the negative bias. When applied to dissonant music, HR decreases, SCR increases, and EMG responses in the face are higher.

  Critic Robin Wood was not the first film critic to take the horror film seriously, but his article Return of the

• 6. Audience Psychology And Physiology

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  Repressed in 1978 helped inaugurate the horror film into academic study as a genre. Steffen Hantke noted that academic criticism about horror cinema had always operated under duress noting that challenges in legitimizing its subject, finding career-minded academics might have always suspected that they were studying something that was ultimately too frivolous, garish, and sensationalistic to warrant serious critical attention. As of 2025, only seven horror films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, with The Silence of the Lambs being the sole winner. Many horror films have been the subject of moral panic, censorship and legal controversy. In the United Kingdom, film censorship has frequently been applied to horror films. A moral panic over several slasher films in the 1980s led to many of them being banned but released on videotape; the phenomenon became popularly termed video nasties. Constraints on permitted subject matter in Indonesian films has also influenced Indonesian horror films. In March 2008, China banned all horror films from its market. In the U.S., the Motion Picture Production Code which was implemented in 1930, set moral guidelines for film content, restraining movies containing controversial themes, graphic violence, explicit sexuality and/or nudity. The gradual abandonment

• 7. Critical Reception And Censorship

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  of the Code, and its eventual formal repeal in 1968 offered more freedom to the movie industry.