The document discusses the horror genre of film. It states that horror films are designed to frighten audiences and explore our deepest fears through disturbing images and shocking finales while entertaining. It discusses common conventions like using monsters to violate nature and threaten characters. Horror films tap into primal fears of death, the unknown, and the dark side of human nature. While scary, watching horror films can be a thrill and provide an outlet for fear without real danger. The genre has evolved over time with early films adapting stories by Stevenson and later influential works like Psycho and The Shining.

1. The Horror Genre
Humberto Roberto Bravo Zambrano

2. The Horror Genre
Horror Films are unsettling films designed to
frighten and panic, cause dread and alarm,
and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a
terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and
entertaining us at the same time.

3. The Horror Genre
Horror films effectively center on the
dark side of life, the forbidden, and
strange and alarming events. They deal
with our most primal nature and its
fears: our nightmares, our vulnerability,
our terror of the unknown, our fear of
death and dismemberment, loss of
identity.

4. The Horror Genre
• The Horror film genre is most recognizable
by its intended emotional effect on the
audience.
• It tries to frighten, shock, disgust and repel
the viewer and this is what shapes the
genre’s other conventions.

5. Why watch it?
Watching a Horror film gives the
audience an opening into that scary
world, into an outlet for the essence of
fear itself, without actually being in
danger. Weird as it sounds, there's a
very real thrill and fun factor in being
scared or watching disturbing, horrific
images.

6. Why watch it?
Horror films, when done well and
with less reliance on horrifying
special effects, can be extremely
potent film forms, tapping into our
dream states and the horror of the
irrational and unknown, and the
horror within man himself.

7. The Horror Genre
The Horror genre horrifying emotional
effect is usually created by a character
convention: a threatening, unnatural
monster.
In a Horror film, a monster is a horrible
breach of nature, a violation of our
normal sense of what is possible.

8. Conventional Horror Plots
• The conventional Horror plot will often
start with the monster’s attack on
normal life.
• In response, the other characters must
discover the monster and try to destroy
it.
• People may not believe the monster
exists or there may be many obstacles
to overcome before they can destroy it.

9. Conventional Themes in Horror
• Man vs. Science: There are things
that humans are not meant to know
or do.
• Man vs. Nature: The environment
and disasters create the monster.

10. Iconography in the Horror Genre
Settings where monsters might be
expected to appear:
• An old, dark house;
• Cemeteries;
• Laboratories;
• Suburbs of big cities.

11. Iconography in the Horror Genre
• Heavy make-up is usually in the
iconography of Horror films.
• Vampires, Zombies, Werewolves.

12. Horror History
The Devil's Castle (1896)
The first Horror movie, only about two
minutes long, was made by imaginative
French filmmaker Georges Melies,
containing some elements of later
vampire films.

13. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)
Taken from Robert Louis Stevenson's story
about a doctor/scientist whose evil side was
brought out by a magic formula.
It was later re-made in many versions.

14. The Mummy (1932)
Notable film with living (or walking) dead,
"zombie" plots included Universal's and first-
time director Karl Freund's classic with Boris
Karloff in the title role as the 3,700 year-old
bandaged corpse of Im-ho-tep.

15. Psycho (1960)
Could be considered the 'Citizen Kane' of horror
films, with its complex Oedipal themes and
schizophrenia. Its most famous scene was the classic
shower murder in which the heroine (Janet Leigh)
was savagely stabbed, with a violin-tinged
memorable score.
The scene still invokes sheer terror, and the film itself
would come to influence all subsequent Hollywood
horror films - especially the 'slasher' horror film
subgenre.

16. The Shining (1980)
Writer Stephen King and director Stanley
Kubrick combine to make a classic tale of
madness and terror, as a family overseeing a
deserted resort hotel confronts the ghosts of
a shocking and bloody past.

17. Hostel (2006)
Stylish “slasher” subgenre film that follows two
Americans and an Icelander, backpacking
across Europe, who head to Slovakia in
search of a hostel that is said to house
sexually promiscuous women.