evolution of horror

[tomedwards7]

i am currently doing a research project on the evolution of horror and need some help. can anyone help and give me some opinions on how they believe horror has changed over time.

[metternich1815]

i am currently doing a research project on the evolution of horror and need some help. can anyone help and give me some opinions on how they believe horror has changed over time.

Thats a little vague. Horror is a huge genre that has changed in many ways (for example, physical experience, sexual behavior, violence, social norms, physical appearance are among many ways that the genre, but this genre is huge and changed in many other ways). I think you should narrow down what you are asking.

[MichaelMyers]

Conclude with the sobering thought that horror is on the wane. We are oversaturated and de-sensitized to violence, therefore the "scare factor" is either ratcheted up with a manic gore-migraine or cheapened with "jump" scenes. Horror much more effective as recent as 20 yrs. ago and much more before then IMO.

[neverending]

Here's all you need to know:
First there was no sound.
Then there was sound, but they were in black and white.
Then they were in color.
Now they're in color and 3D.

[TokyoTenshi]

Come on, you gotta be more clear on what you want...

If I tell you what I think on evolution of horror in general, I wouldn't be able to stop typing for weeks. You should narrow it down to what you're looking for. What horror? It's such a broad subject. Are you talking about filmmaking? Game? Ideas? Perception? Western horror? Asian horror? Japanese horror? Indonesian? Korean? Chinese? Malaysian? Indian? Are you talking about ghost? Alien? Demon? Possession? Urban Legends? The list goes on and on and on.

[phantomstranger]

I'm afraid I have to agree with everyone else , your a bit vague on what you want. Pick one horror subject, say "The Vampire" genre and look how that's changed from decade to decade.
Just asking how horrors changed is never going to get you an answer.

[Giganticface]

Here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_film

[tomedwards7]

i want to know your opinions on how horror has changed overall as a genre, for example how it has changed from Dracula to the likes of saw. these are my points and why i believe horror has evolved.

1) Globalization and instant access to worldwide media has affected horror. The real world isn't any more terrifying than it was a hundred years ago, but now we can see it for ourselves. Foreign wars and drug cartel beheadings and third world famine zones are now right in our living rooms and horror seems to have adjusted to match - especially in terms of depicting human cruelty and depravity.

2) Modern horror has largely replaced implied danger and atmosphere with more visceral moments and jump scares. Not true in all cases of course, but certainly in a lot. Older audiences were more entertained by what was going to happen, rather than what is happening now.

3) I think we're seeing a new exploration of how to drive the emotions of horror with art direction and cinematography. This was common in the older movies (pre 60s) but seems to have gotten lost, especially in the 80s and 90s. From the 2000s forward we started seeing a lot of subdued and sepia tones, grain filters, film scratch effects - sort of like a modern effort to achieve some of the chiaroscuro effects of the old B&Ws, and also mirroring the darker, more squalid tones coming out in modern horror.

4) As much as horror evolves, the element of the supernatural - or rather the unknowable - never seems to change much. Monsters became ghosts, and now ghosts are becoming Aliens - the common factor is that they're not us and the ways to fight them are hard to discover for the protagonists.

5) Each era seems to have an underground batch of entries that hanker back to a previous era. The Haunting (63) didn't have to be black and white, for example, colour had been commonplace for quite some time by then. Today we see movies harking back to the late 70s (House of the Devil) and the campiness of the 80s (Hatchet, Slither, Cabin in the woods). I suspect that in 20 years time we'll have some throwbacks being released that try to affect the tone of the 2010s.

[neverending]

So, you seem to have your thesis already... why do you need us?

BTW- I'm not sure I agree with your statement that the world is not any more scary today than it was in the past. I think society in general has become more impersonal, desensitized to an ever increasing amount of violence. Is there any doubt why the zombie is the iconic horror image currently?

[tomedwards7]

i need to gather different peoples opinions on the topic. nowadays we are scared of different things than we was in the past. we see things through the media that create a scare, for example 100 years ago we didn't fear nuclear war and terrorist attacks. with the advancements in media, it has created more of a threat because we can see things that never used to be shown before media. for example 9/11 created an iconic image which reminds us of terror. i believe it is harder to scare us nowadays so producers and directors are relying on other things to get us to view the film for example saw and the final destination films; these are gore films that the audience know what to expect when they see the films.:):):):)

[sleepaway]

I always thought it was interesting how the 1931 Frankenstein was seen as so shocking at the time and people fainted. As has been mentioned, it's because people did not have access to the type of images it was showing. Similar to island of Lost Souls - it's difficult to understand how that was so controversial.

Also, if you think that in the UK Tobe Hooper's Funhouse was original on the Video Nasties list and is currently now only rated a 15! The Terminator was an 18 certificate when I was growing up and is also now only a 15. Now doubt one day it will be deemed as a PG.

I've also found as a viewer that different films can be more effective via different medias. Some movies I find harder to watch on the big screen (the Final Destinations for example) while others are far more enjoyable watching in the same way. Cinema sound systems may have something to do with that, sometimes the scares are not visual at all the audio just comes out of nowhere and becomes its own jump scare. I don't recall that happening until quite recently, not as much anyway.

I still feel some of the creepiest films are older ones. The Exorcist still creeps me out. I still find it uncomfortable watching Jaws.

[Sculpt]

I would ask... what aspect of horror movies do you want to observe for it's evolution?

Techniques evolved with technology, special effects, music, lighting, etc.

Horror topics, what people were anxious/scared of, has changed, or evolved, if you will, with changing times... such as advancing sciences, hypnotism, war, savages, voodoo, plagues, seances, ghosts, organized crime, fascism/communism, ed gein, helter skelter, atomic bombs, government abuses, aliens, corporate control, gacey, terrorism, etc.

Types of scares, as far as, the unseen, revealing something horrible, visual monster, jump out of the closet, and gore... I'd suggest those were tied to the first two evolving factors: tech and what people were currently anxious about.