Genre Essay

Film Studies Essay – Genre.

The genre I am going to look at is horror; I will be looking at what makes a horror film, what horror films aim to do, in terms of creating meaning and provoking response from audiences. I will be doing this by examining the history, conventions and techniques used in films throughout this genre.

Horror films have been regarded as violent, low budget movies, nonetheless, all the major studios and many respected directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, William Friedkin, Richard Donner, and Francis Ford Coppola have dabbled into the genre. Some horror films incorporate elements of other genres such as science fiction, fantasy, black comedy, and thrillers.

The horror genre is made up of unsettling films designed to frighten and panic, cause dread and alarm, and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time, this is done by the use of its simple, but effective storylines and props, among numerous other things including lighting and mise-en-scene

A horror films plot generally revolves around the themes and issues of death, ranging from murders to suicide, mental illnesses, the supernatural, i.e. vampires, werewolves, mummies or ghosts, including numerous others that have been used over the years. These issue are often referred to as conventions, and are what we recognise, and expect a horror film to contain, whether it be something simple as blood or murder, to complicated plots with complex twists.
It was in the early 1930s that American film producers, particularly Universal Pictures Co. Inc., popularized the horror film, bringing to the screen a series of successful Gothic features including Dracula, The Mummy, some of which blended science fiction films with Gothic horror. Universal's horror films continued into the 1940s with The Wolf Man, not the first werewolf film, but certainly the most influential. Throughout the decade Universal also continued to produce more sequels in the Frankenstein series, as well as a number of films teaming up several of their monsters. With advances in technology that occurred in the 1950s, the tone of horror films shifted from the gothic toward concerns that some saw as being more relevant to the late-Century audience. The horror film was seen to fall into three sub-genres: the horror-of-personality film, the horror-of-Armageddon film and the horror-of-the-demonic film. The ideas of the 1960s began to influence horror films, as the youth involved in the counterculture began exploring the medium. Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre recalled the Vietnam war; George Romero satirized the consumer society in his 1978 zombie sequel, Dawn of the Dead. Also in the 1970s, horror author Stephen King debuted on the film scene as many of his books were adapted for the screen, beginning with Brian DePalma's adaptation of King's first published novel, Carrie, which was nominated for Academy Awards. The 1980s were marked by the growing popularity of horror movie sequels. 1982's Poltergeist (directed by Tobe Hooper) was followed by two sequels and a television series. The seemingly-endless sequels to Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Wes Craven's successful supernatural slasher A Nightmare on Elm Street were the popular face of horror films in the 1980s.
There has been a major return to the zombie genre in horror movies made after 2000. The Resident Evil video game franchise was adapted into a film released in March 2002. Two sequels have followed. The British film 28 Days Later featured an update on the genre with a new style of aggressive zombie. The film later spawned a sequel: 28 Weeks Later. An updated remake of Dawn of the Dead soon appeared as well as the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead. This resurgence lead George A. Romero to return to his Living Dead series with Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead and the upcoming Survival of the Dead. A typical cinemagraphic technique used in many horror films is the point of view shot, which is generally a shot showing us exactly what the character is looking at, as if we were in their situation and position. Horror films and thrillers often use point of view shots to suggest a menacing and unseen presence in the scene. A major key technique used is the precise use of different props and mise-en-scene, whether it is character props like weapons, or detailed backgrounds and custom built locations like crypts and haunted houses, another point to mention is its clever use of lighting, which plays a major role of creating tension and an eerie atmosphere. Each of the techniques are used intentionally to create a sense of fear and terror with the audience