The History Of Horror Genre

History of horror genre -

Research into horror genres - Slideshare

The first ever horror film was the silent, short film, 'Le Manoir du Diable.' It was made in 1896, and was directed by Georges Melies. It was not only the first horror film, but also the first vampire film. Although the film only lasted a couple of minutes, the audiences loved it and wanted more.

Horror film budgets rose significantly in the 1960's and some of the most famous horror were made, some of which are still very well known today. The film, 'The exorcist,' broke records and is still said to be one of the scariest films of all time. We can link this particular film to ours as the genre is a horror and the sub-genre is a psychological thriller as well as a body thriller.



Alfred Hitchcock's, 'Psycho' (1960) also terrified audiences across the world. The fact that the audience could see everything that happened, and because the music was loud and tense it made the film a lot scarier. Audiences all over, still get terrified when standing in showers. This could be similar to our film, as we could use everyday factors of life and make them scary. In, 'Psycho,' getting in the shower has been made to seem terrifying, in our film it could be going to sleep or making a cup of tea. A version of this film was made in 1998 by Gus Van Sant, the cinematography, script and music was almost identical to the original, and it still terrified many audiences across the world. 

From the 1980's onwards, horror films began to become more graphic, explicit, disturbing and gory. The early types of these films include, 'The Shining,' 'A nightmare on Elm Street,' and 'The evil dead.' These films were all rated 18 due to the increased amount of profanities, the explicitness and the gore.

In the 1990's, horror films began to have twists in them and directors wanted to go for different styles instead of just scares and sex. Successful films made in the 1990's include, 'The Blair witch project,' 'Scream,' and 'The sixth sense.' These films were huge hits as they were different, because of how they were shot and the twists in the story lines.



In the 2000's, films reverted back to going for the scare and the thrill. Lots of jump scares were used, as well as monsters. Successful films from the 2000's were, '28 days later,' 'rec,' and, 'The ring.' All of these film feature monsters such as zombies and ghosts which are stereotypical conventions of modern day horror films. The sub-genres were monster horrors but to increase the thrill of the movie, they would more than often feature car chases and gun fights.





This is a scene taken from the 2004 film, "Sean of the dead.' This film is a spoof horror film but still includes conventions from the horror genre. The sub-genre of this film is a comedy horror and an action horror. There were an increased amount of action horrors and monster horrors in the 2000's, and these types of scenes were featured in many.

In the 2010's, audiences seemed to want ghost films and gore. Successful films included, 'Sinister,' 'The conjuring,' and slasher films such as, 'Wolf Creek 2.' These films features a lot of jump scares that relied on the lighting, music and mise-en scene. The gore that is featured in a lot of modern horrors is extremely disturbing as the institutions want to be constantly giving the audience more choice so they can get more money. They are constantly demanding more and more so that horror films are becoming scarier and more graphic. I believe that the future of horror films will go on to become more scarier as films will want to scare the audience with new and terrifying monsters and the sex and gore will increase also to give the audience more choice in horror films and also increase the thrill.