Jade's Adventures in Food & Travel: Genre Research Activity

Horror

With this being my favourite genre and with the upcoming Halloween season; it only made sense I choose this genre.

What is horror?

Horror in media is used to frigten, distrub or scare its audience. It focuses on dark, disturbing, or deadly issues in an attempt to create feelings of terror, dread, shock, or disgust. The Monster/Villain Threat: The characters' lives or sanity are constantly in danger. This danger may be:

Otherworldly: vampires, demons, ghosts, or curses (a example The Exorcist).

Human psychological disorders include severe violence, insanity, or serial killings (for example, Psycho).

Physical/Sci-Fi: Aliens, horrific physical transformations, or catastrophic catastrophes (for example, The Fly or Alien).

Content

Foreshadowing is a technique used in horror films to create a sense of dread and anticipation by introducing subtle clues and symbols that make the horrific events seem inescapable.

Hereditary (2018)

Ex: The film Hereditary shocking conclusion seems predictable because of the Graham family's chosen fate as members of a demonic cult. In addition to being a true supernatural conspiracy, the eerieness also serves as a metaphor for mental illness and psychological trauma.

In horror, the main goal of the protagonist is to stay safe from the monster, which creates fear. This character faces a fate worse than death because it violates the Core Value of Damnation to Life. The audience’s main emotion is fear, which gets resolved during the Core Event. In this moment, the victim is at the mercy of the threat but eventually gains the strength to fight or sacrifices their life.

An essential aspect of effective horror is manipulating the audience’s senses, primarily through the skills of sound and filmmaking. Directors employ underexposure and low-key lighting, often referred to as chiaroscuro, to conceal threats in the shadows and darkness, intensifying viewers' unease regarding the unknown. Dutch angles and Point-of-View (POV) shots, which place the audience in the role of either the pursuer or the prey, are two examples of disorienting perspectives used in film to portray psychological confusion. Furthermore, sound design plays a crucial role: dark soundscapes and erratic scores instill a sense of dread, while strategically timed silences followed by sudden loud noises generate jump scares.

Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974

To capitalize on people's common anxieties and generate a lot of word-of-mouth advertising, horror movie marketers utilize straightforward but effective techniques.

One key tactic is to make fear feel genuine by blurring the line between reality and imagination. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) serves as a notable example, cleverly marketed as "Inspired by True Events." The film’s chilling,This deception idea, which was repeated in both the opening narration and marketing materials, increased the lifelike picture. It was a resourceful, low-cost strategy that capitalized on the public's fascination with real crimes to attract a wide audience..

Friday the 13th 1980
Friday the 13th (1980) revolutionized the horror genre, notably the slasher film, by developing a highly successful pattern. Special effects became a big selling point for horror films in the future as gore and graphic death sequences got increasingly popular. The film also reinforced the widely held concept that characters who use drugs or have sex before marriage are bound to die, adding a socially aware element that dominated 1980s horror. Finally, the strategy's effectiveness was shown by its massive film box office success on a low budget, which created the long-running horror franchise model and made its elements—which ranged from the distant summer camp to the iconic sound design—instantly recognisable in popular culture.

The Exorcist 1973

The Exorcist (1973) established the subgenre of spiritual horror and grounded supernatural terror in a frightening, accessible reality, so revolutionizing and strongly aligning with the horror genre. The film raised the standard for the amount of shock and explicit horror that is permitted in mainstream cinema by introducing horrifying, bodily visuals to the audience, such as the 360-degree head-turn and projectile vomiting. Most significantly, it addressed profound societal fears by addressing the issue of faith, with possession proving the existence of both God and the Devil, thereby providing a world in which supernatural evil is a real physical danger that needs to be fought by human beings.

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