Why do we crave horror movies? It’s a question that has puzzled Stephen King, one of the most successful horror authors of all time. In his essay “Why We Crave Horror Movies,” King posits that we are drawn to these films because they offer a vicarious release from our everyday fears and anxieties. King argues … Read more
The 1978 John Carpenter classic Halloween is my all time favorite film, both inside and outside the horror genre. Nothing in the Halloween franchise can come close to touching it, and although it does have some pretty impressive rivals in the form of Alien, The Shining, Scream, and It Follows, Halloween in my opinion still … Read more
Pulp Fiction was originally magazines with tales about bigger than life characters solving crimes or rescuing a damsel in distress. The stories were written on “pulp” which was the cheapest paper available in the 1930’s and 40’s. The low price and exotic new stories drew in readers like moths to a flame. The stories were … Read more
Categorizing films into different genres allows viewers to anticipate patterns and themes interwoven throughout the end product. Film scholars David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson exclaim, “Audiences expect the genre film to offer something familiar but also demand fresh variations on it” (Friedman 5). Audiences can use genres to form expectations before viewing a film. With … Read more
From the moment you’re born, your mind begins to develop certain emotions, a lot of which help you determine how to feel about different types of situations. One of these emotions is fear. Everybody is afraid of something in life. However, is being afraid always a bad thing? Given people’s high demand for horror these … Read more
The definition of meta, is something that is reflected in itself, or self-referencing of itself in something. It also has to deal with something that is aware of itself. Meta-horror is a horror that self-references itself in the movie, or a horror book. Another concept of meta-horror, is that the characters are going to know … Read more
The beginning of found footage films can be traced back to the 1980’s with Cannibal Holocaust, it used both a staged filmmaking style and introduced a lost footage, then recovered and shown to the public style of filmmaking. While Cannibal Holocaust was one of the first films, The Blair Witch Project (1999) gave a new … Read more
Rakshit Bhasker Dr. Jonathan Ball ENGL 1400 A05 9 December 2015 [Research Paper Title] Horror stories are created in such a way to create fear, fascination, and excitement amongst the readers. They frequently comprise of different elements, a supernatural force or creature, for example monsters and zombies, or a psychotic figure being the more commonly … Read more