Horror films are movies in which the goal is to terrify, shock, or illicit feelings of disgust from the watching audience. They have been around since the late eighteen hundreds and sometimes overlap with other genres such as thriller. The term “horror” can be used to describe all kinds of different movies from ones involving ghosts to ones about murderers. What makes some scary movies scarier than others is often hard to gage as well.
The first movies of this type were the silent films about cursed locations and demons in the early 1900s. The first ever film version of Frankenstein by Mary Shelly was released in 1910 and was successful in scaring both North American and European audiences. Back then, the majority of the horror movies were produced and made in Germany, who, early on, had cornered the horror market effectively. American filmmakers, by the thirties, started jumping into the game with works such as Frankenstein, Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde, and Dracula.
Different things will scare different types of people but the directors and producers of the early thirties and twenties discovered fairly quickly that suspense, sudden plot twists, eerie sound effects, and other factors were more effective at getting people frightened than scary monsters or bloody guts.
Alfred Hitchcock, a world famous director and writer, is attributed with providing the greatest contributions to the horror genre. He pioneered numerous methods and techniques throughout his successful and long career, many of which are still used in psychological and suspense films even today. Most of Hitchcock’s feature films are considered classics and the director himself is considered to be one of the world’s absolute best.
Hitchcock’s most famous early movie, “Shadow of a Doubt” is also one of the original psychological thrillers and the man himself’s personal favorite. The film was so culturally relevant that it was selected to be included in a National Film Registry so its scary dialogue, well developed characters, and suspenseful camera angles could be viewed and studied by film fans for years to come.
His most well known projects, such as “Vertigo”, “Rear Window”, and “Strangers on a Train” were completed throughout the fifties. Each of them showcased Hitchcock’s natural ability to frighten an audience with intelligent plots, emotionally unstable characters, and well placed spooky music.
Although monsters like Godzilla and King Kong are pretty scary, many of the industry’s most frightening thriller and horror films are ones in which the antagonist or ‘monster’ is never actually seen. “Rosemary’s Baby” did a great job with this by avoiding showing the demonic baby which is mentioned and alluded to throughout the movie. Other films such as “The Blair Witch Project” and “Jaws” use this technique as well. By not showing something, directors could ultimately force the audience to fear it even more.
Another popular and effective technique involves the placement and type of music that a scary movie uses. Sometimes a film’s soundtrack is the most powerful factor when it comes to frightening or shocking people. While they may not have realized it at the time, the audiences who watched “Jaws” were kept on the edge of their seats by the movie’s infamous score.
If you enjoy scary movies then try playing some scary games. There is a wide choice of free scary games online like the scary maze game.