Research: The History Of Horror Films

Horror Films are 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 in a cathartic experience. Horror films effectively center on the dark side of life, the forbidden, and strange and alarming events. They deal with our most primal nature and its fears: our nightmares, our vulnerability, our alienation, our revulsions, our terror of the unknown, our fear of death and dismemberment, loss of identity, or fear of sexuality.

Horror films go back as far as the onset of films themselves, over a 100 years ago. From our earliest days, we use our vivid imaginations to see ghosts in shadowy shapes, to be emotionally connected to the unknown and to fear things that are improbable. Watching a horror film gives an opening into that scary world, into an outlet for the essence of fear itself, without actually being in danger. Weird as it sounds, there's a very real thrill and fun factor in being scared or watching disturbing, horrific images.

People like horrors because It's just a form of entertainment. Many people love comedies or love stories or dramas.It takes you places that you will never go. Who knows what's around that corner. They leave you guessing and the better ones even set up elaborate puzzles that you have to try to figure out. There is a lot more to horror movies than gore and blood, some work on primal levels of fear or nightmares that you may have. Many horror films are just that, nightmares that someone wrote down and wanted to show others.  It's cathartic in a way, instead of taking out aggression on someone or something, you watch someone else do it instead and since you know it's all special effects you just enjoy the ride.  It's like a roller coaster ride, it takes you on a visual journey that you won't have with other types of films. Sure some horror movies are repetitive and they copy other horror films but a really good film takes you away from the reality of the world and allows you to see what it's like behind the eyes of a killer or victim (depending on the film of course) and it even helps some people deal with their fears.  There is more to horror than meets the eye.

In horror films usually what you won't do, go in to, pick up etc, the characters do otherwise the film will not be scary. That is a convention. 

In this clip you can notice a lot of conventions, such as in a scene from candyman, the woman says 'Candyman' and guess what, the Candyman appears and kills her.

I tend not to watch horrors because 1 they scare me and 2, they are quite pointless because they do things that nobody else would do.