Tom Curtis' Media Blog: The History of Horror Genre

Horror films are made to confront people’s fears and nightmares. They use these features, creatures and irrational thoughts to make people scared so the viewer can get a thrill. Horrors are known to begin with George Melies’ short films in the 1890’s (particularly Le Manoir du diable). Japan then took an interest in the category in 1898.

Possibly one of the greatest known horrors Frankenstein was next made; it was originally released in 1910, but along with other great known movies (such as Bram stoker’s novel- Dracula) it was remade. In fact, a lot of the well-known movies and characters that the newer generation will know today were made originally in the 1900’s.

Zombies are one of the most known parts of horror films; which is obvious- the living dead rose to eat the flesh of humans is bound to be remembered. But originally this was not the story; the idea of zombies came from multiple cultures, in particularly the Haitian religions and other African versions of Voodoo. It was around 1930 that it became an idea used to make people frightened of the living dead in novels and movies such as The Magic (1929) and white zombie (1932).

Although one of the most remembered, the living dead are not the only categories in horror. Other sub-genres also began appearing during the 1900’s. Possibly one of the most known of these is slasher, arriving properly in 1960 with Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (rated the top in IMDB’s top rated horror’s), this subgenre is a horror section that slightly mixes with thriller, creating films commonly about murderers seeking out a group of characters one by one.

The 1970’s and 80’s was a huge part of horrors releasing some of the most iconic movies in the genre; this includes shivering tales such as The Exorcist (1973), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Jaws (1975), Carrie (1976 and re-released in 2013), The Omen (1976 and re-released in 2006), Halloween (1978), Dawn of The Dead (1978 and re-released in 2004), Alien (1979), Friday the 13^th (1980), the shining (1980), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and Child’s Play (1988). This series of long living films created multiple chain reactions of sequels, re-releases, copies and even prequels; needless to say the past generations of horror films have influenced new films in numerous ways.

The sub-genre slasher continued through 1990 releasing sequels of films from the previous years, but this was wearing it out as the last 20 years was filled with this style of gory horrors. This did not help seen as so computer generated imagery was making a huge advance improving special effects for other genres; this meant that genres like sci-fi and fantasy made a huge leap forwards taking the audience of horror.

The 21^st century made an improvement on the genre, it started to use features from the previous century. It even introduced the living dead back to our cinemas with films like the Resident Evil franchise (adapted into films from 2002 onwards), I Am Legend (2007) and Zombie Land (2009) which shows another style of horror films- comedy horror. Ghosts have also been reintroduced with films such as paranormal activity (2007); and even though these features have been brought back, slasher has also stayed along side with continuous rereleases of previous films.