Horror Films

Horror as a genre is as old as film itself. Horror films are designed to terrify and alarm it's audience while entertaining at the same time. Horror is a genre that I am very interested in but as of yet I have only watched a handful of films.

Horror films can affect an audience both physically and psychologically. They can make your heart race and your palms sweat, as well as staying in a person's mind for a long time after, affecting their fears, like not wanting to be left alone in a dark room.

Film makers use various ways to scare viewers, sometimes they use lighting or sound effects to enhance the viewer's experience. The Blair Witch Project uses an interesting approach to affect the viewer by making the camera shake and tremble as if it's actually happening to the viewer and their actually there an witnessing what is going on. Sometimes it can be music or even make up that creates the tension and effect.
Horror films can range from the everyday experiences or something viewers can relate to to like being trapped or followed, to a story which would be fairly unbelievable such as robots taking over the world.
The everyday can be more terrifying, for example, Devil is about 5 strangers who are trapped in a lift and the Devil is with them. They can only be observed on CCTV and there is no other way of communication. Each person in the lift dies and as you watch the tension mounts because you don't know who is next or how their death will come. It is shocking and gruesome at times.

My favourite horror movie to date is Mama, this is about two children who are kidnapped by their father who intends to kill them. He is killed and the girls are raised by a ghostly figure they call Mama. They have no social interaction with anyone else for 5 years before being found. The film makers use dark and dull colours and costumes to set the mood of the film; the music they use is very eerie which enhances the tension even more. The character Mama appears from a swarm of moths and thinks she is protecting the girls. This film had a massive effect on me personally as I have a huge fear of moths, they appear throughout the film, signifying that Mama is near. The film is full of tension making the audience breathless and their hearts race. Afterwards you feel alive like you have survived being around Mama, it's a bit of an adrenaline rush.

Children are often used in horror films and are often possessed by something or someone. Children are supposed to be innocent, and evil children play on our sub-conscious making us both nervous and frightened. Films such as The Unborn, which is about a teenager who is being haunted by a strange boy from one of her dreams, use the frightening affect that children have in horror films. Special effects in this film add to the drama and are some times stomach churning. Insidious also uses both special effects and children again as a way to increase the fear and tension experienced in the film.
Dead Silence is a film that uses a common fear as it's hook, is a film about a ventriloquist and her creepy dummies. A dead woman, Mary Shaw, is using her dummies to kill people in the area of where she died. The idea of a killer dummy would frighten many, especially those who are already scared of ventriloquist dummies. This is the most gruesome film I have watched. And gore is used to scare the audience even more.

In conclusion the affect horror films have on people varies depending on the person and their fears; the films rely on the phobias of those watching whether it be blood and gore, or being trapped or the dark.