Horror Movies

As defined by Wikipedia: Horror films are movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, horror and terror from viewers. Mhmm. They try to scare you. Horror movies have been around since movies were first filmed, and have evolved A LOT. To sum up the entire evolution of horror films briefly...the movies of the past used lots of psycological crap to scare people. The horror movies now use lots of gore to freak people out. So are they really that scary if the only way they scare you is by their excessive use of blood? Most people agree that the same repetitive zombie-chainsaw-ghost thing is getting old. So what is unique in horror movies? I don't do the scary thing, so my thoughts might not count. But here they are anyway.

Movies like The Blair Witch Project have pretty original, in my opinion. Why? When it first came out, people actually thought that it was real footage from real dumb college students who got lost in the middle of the woods. It might seem stupid thinking back on it, but you know that if you were in a tent and you heard a noise presumably made by a witch/goat/spirit you would be running through the woods in your socks screaming "WHAT WAS THAT??? WHAT WAS THAT!!!" I find the way that it was created to be unique as well. From my understanding, they pretty much just dumped the three actors in the middle of nowhere with video cameras and notes of what was going to happen each day. And from then on, it was all improv. Also, a website was created that furthered everyone's beliefs that it was real. Whether you think that it's a bad movie or not, you have to admit that a lot of creativity went into it. Here's the website link. There's actually a lot of pretty cool stuff on it: http://www.blairwitch.com/


The "inescapable virus" horror movie is pretty common, but to me, it's still pretty scary. In other horror films, a good general rule is "stay away from that big scary thing, and don't go outside when it's dark". Newsflash: you can't run away from a virus. A good example of virus movies would Cabin Fever. Practically everyone who has seen it thinks that it's stupid, but because of my severe emetophobia, it freaks me out beyond the normal freak out levels. I got about 15 minutes in and had to stop watching it. And then I was scared to drink water...or eat anything with water in it (which turns out to be everything...) for about 5 hours. Even if vomiting and blood and bad acting don't scare you, I'd really recommend NEVER watching this movie. Ever.

Horror movies of the past relied more of the psychological elements to scare people. And it worked. Alfred Hitchcock directed movies whose concepts scarify people to this day. Though I haven't seen any, I've heard that despite their ancientness, they're actually pretty good.


On the not-so-creative side of the spectrum, you have popular horror movies of today, such as Saw, Hostel, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They often include various forms of "gore-nography" (exactly what it sounds like) where the victims are violently tortured and killed. Eliminate the blood, and it's not terrifying in the least. Proof of this? I laughed throughout most of The Hills Have Eyes. And I leave you with this quote.
"Hobo munchin on a dog leg, hehehe."