The Evolution of horror

Despite being a long time anxiety sufferer, a not so guilty pleasure of mine has always been horror.

It started with the odd movie and book and book here and there, with the original 'Fright Night' starring Roddy McDowall (of Planet of the Apes fame) being one of the first movies to pop my horror movie cherry and 'The saga of Darren Shan' exposing me to Children's horror novels when I was eleven, before spiralling through my teenage years. Even now, I'll head straight to a horror section in HMV as soon as I'm finished looking at the CD's.

From the aforementioned Darren Shan to the prolific works of Stephen King, I would always make a beeline for the horror section of my local Waterstones for any books that caught my eye. Combine that with movie adaptions of their works on top of cult classic movies such as John Carpenter's 'The Thing' to 'Hellraiser' and 'The Lost Boys', there was a certain thrill I got from consuming horror. Even now, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King and Darren Shan have a home in my bookshelves, and movies such as John Carpenter's 'The Fog', 'The Lighthouse', 'Us', and 'Firestarter' have a place in my far to large DVD collection.

Somethings I've enjoyed from my love of horror over the past near-decade now are both the creative spins on classic horror creatures such as vampires, zombies and even society as a whole, and the mediums we tell horror through.

While stories of Vampires have always had a piece of complexity in their stories - for example, Bram Stroker's 'Dracula' being as much of a romance as a horror, horror series such as 'The saga of Darren Shan' explore the more human side of vampires, with a society equal to non-vampires, with an equal power structure and issues that show that even if they have they are no longer human in the typical sense, they still crave the companionship and familiarity from the human world. While they may not be human, they're not mindless monsters focused on blood either.

Something similar is seen in the book 'Warm Bodies' by Isaac Marion. While the zombies in this book do have many traits of classic zombies - both by their slouching, slow moving looks and lust for brains and blood when they get hungry - by telling the story through the perspective of a zombie, they become much more human. While the main character in the book, 'R' cannot remember who he was before he became a zombie and still has an overwhelming desperation to feed when his body craves it, he can still remember parts of human life - such as the concept of marriage, family and friends. While I can't speak for everyone, to me, being a zombie in this universe seems more like living with a parasite - it won't kill it's host as it wants to survive, but it doesn't give the host any benefits that don't also benefit itself. Instead of being a mindless rotting corpse that the living heroes don't mind killing to survive, the zombie characters in this book have more life in them as, like the vampires from Darren Shan's series, they haven't fully given up their humanity.

While I believe that horror novels always try to say something about society, many try to show the evils and horrors of it, so it's nice to see a development on that even some of the darkest parts of society have some humanity in them.

With horror movies on the other hand, I have a few mixed things to say about them.

Classic horror movies began as mainly adaptations of horror stories, such as 'The tell tale heart' and various movies staring Vincent Price, such as 'Dracula' and 'The Masque of the red death'. While there are still adaptations of horror novels (Stephen King has them in abundance), modern day horror movies can be split into six separate sub-genres of horror movie:

- Book adaptions,

- commentaries,

- jump scare,

- Innocent turned scary,

- monster

- Slasher.

I've already mentioned book adaptions, so I'll start with commentaries. Commentary horrors use horror to make a commentary about society, such as 'Get Out' and 'Us' making a commentary about racism and 'The Invisible man' (2020) being a commentary on abusive relationships. These films use the dark parts of our society and uses horror movies as the medium to comment and discuss just how terrifying and often traumatising these can be.

Jump scare movies are very different. Movies such as the terrifier movies, the paranormal activity franchise and 'Sinister', which are scary for the sake of being scary. 'Terrifier 2' for example, gained a reputation for being 'vomit-inducing' (from the Guardian) and had 'patrons fainting and vomiting' (from Screen Rant) due to the gore used in the movie to add to the horror. This type of movie focuses more on making something scary rather than anything else, which can be great if you're wanting a scare, but aren't good choices if you want a horror more thought provoking or psychological.

Innocent turned scary is fairly obvious. The movie takes something innocent, such as something from your childhood (like Winnie the Pooh) that you don't associate with scary, then make it scary. While this trope is more common with old creepypasta's, such as 'Sonic.exe', 'Lavender town' and 'Ben Drowned', it's beginning to make it's way into movies, with the recently released movie 'Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey'. Horror like this comes part from the knowledge of the innocence of how the characters in this story are usually consumed (primarily as Children's media or childish content) and partly from our knowledge of classic horror tropes and our reaction to them. Other examples of this include horror movies where children are either possessed or are the movies villain(s), such as 'The Exorcist', 'Pet Sematary' and 'The Ring'. Combining these two makes for a unique kind of horror as putting something we know isn't scary such as children and children related content into something scary can show us the horror through a child's eyes as well as the indescribably horror that comes from an innocent idea being twisted.

I debated putting monster movies into this list as I believe they can be catergorised as a separate genre, but they do overlap. Monster movies such as 'Dracula', 'World War Z' and 'The Lost Boys' draw their horror from the threat that comes from the monsters. For example, vampires in movies such as 'Dracula' and 'The lost Boys' are scary as an encounter with them usually ends in death or becoming a near-mindless monster, just as zombies in most zombie movies. Despite our knowledge that these monster's aren't real, it's the consequences of what would happen if they were that frighten us.

Lastly, there are slasher movies. Slasher movies have been common since the late seventies with 'Halloween'. These movies are still common, primarily due to franchises such as 'Halloween' and 'Friday the 13th', as well as reboots like 'Candyman'. These become popular due to their two separate sources of horror - the first being normal human's who are just evil murdering either family members and/or random strangers, and the second being that somewhere in the franchise, the killers become more than human. For example, the' Friday the 13th' Franchise began as a mother murdering to avenge her son's death to her son, Jason Vorhees becoming an seemingly immortal killer with a feud with other famous horror villain Freddy Kreuger from 'nightmare on Elm street'. This terrifies us as an audience as not only does it create a fear of normal, every day people, but also of what happens when vengeance goes too far and creates a monster.

With the wide variety of horror movies in the sub-genres mentioned above, it seems like we should be at an all-time high for great horror movies, and while we are in some regards, there seem to be as many misses as there are hits.

For example, while jump scare movies are great for giving us a new source of terror, it doesn't always work in the movies favour. One such movie, is 'Terrifier 2', who I mentioned earlier had scared people into slight sickness. This made the movie controversial as while many loved that kind of horror, just as many didn't, as seen with reviews both praising and despising the gore used in the movie. With movies that focus on jump scares as their main source of fear, I believe it can sacrifice other forms of horror, like psychological horror, if not done correctly.

Innocent turned Scary can be just as difficult. With films like the 2017 and 2019 adaptions of the Stephen King book 'It', there was some success in turning the innocent (clowns, children, and that one scene in 'It: Chapter 2' with the dog) uses things that are, for the most part, innocent and turning them scary. However, with movies such as 'Winnie the Pooh: blood and honey' has, from the reviews I've seen, has a similar vibe to those classic creepypasta's of 'Insert children's character/show is evil', where all the horror comes (unsuccessfully) from the simple fact that the characters that aren't usually evil, now are.

Compare these to the cult classics from the end of the 20th century, for example, John Carpenter's 'The Thing', 'Halloween', and 'Hellraiser' where many horror movies are considered cult classics, it makes me wonder, the differences between older and modern horror movies.

Overall, I believe that despite how many modern horror movies may not be the greatest we've ever had, it comes down to two separate things.

The first is nostalgia. This is obvious - growing up on older horror movies, many have rose tinted glasses for the 'good old days' of horror, where monsters were created through various practical effects. Obviously, the quality has changed over the last fifty years, so many of the things we associate with classic horror movies are used less and less, which of course separates the various stages of horror movies and how we see horror as a whole - that being now less about a build up of something scary and more jump scares and gore, however there are still countless horror movies that became popular in the eighties where now, forty years later, we're still getting movies in those franchises. However, with the overabundance of these franchises which, due to moving with the times, feels less like the originals everyone loved.

The second is the type of horror we mainly see now. Many classic horror movies, such as 'Halloween', 'The Thing', 'Friday the thirteenth' and 'Nightmare on Elm Street' all focus on the horrors of something. The terror of the unknown in 'The Thing'. The fear of what would happen if someone was void of compassion in 'Halloween'. What if the terror of nightmares didn't end when you woke up with 'Nightmare on Elm street'. The horror came from something that is already scary. Compare that now with films like 'Terrifier 2' and 'Paranormal activity' where many of the horror comes from jump scares and you'll see the difference. The horror doesn't come from social commentary, but rather, an attempt to scare the audience.

Between this, it is clear that, while there still can be great horror movies today, it really comes down to how you're trying to scare people and originality.