History of Horror: An Overview

Horror is a film genre seeking to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's primal fears. Horror films often feature scenes that startle the viewer; the macabre and the supernatural are frequent themes. Thus they may overlap with the fantasy, supernatural, and thriller genres.

Horror films often deal with the viewer's nightmares, hidden fears, revulsion and terror of the unknown. Plots within the horror genre often involve the intrusion of an evil force, event, or personage, commonly of supernatural origin, into the everyday world.











Prevalent elements include ghosts, aliens, vampires, werewolves, demons, gore, torture, vicious animals, evil witches, monsters, zombies,cannibals, and serial killers. Conversely, movies about the supernatural are not necessarily always horrific.



 















Early horror films such as Nosferatu (1922) revolutionized the 20's horror genre through Max Scheck's sinister vampire like villain, which include rat-like make-up. The same happened with Frankenstein in the 30's with the eventual ban of the film due to it being inappropriate (such as the scene when the little girl is drowned by the monster) and far too violent for the audience of this time. These days the restrictions of how much gore and violence can be shown in a film are much more relaxed and directors can get away with much more.