To start with horror movies are one of my biggest passion. If I had the time I would write a whole essay on the subject but I'll try to keep it short for the blog. One of the biggest questions asked about the horror genre is, "Why horror at all?". Well, I believe the answer is simple, it gets a reaction out of us. For the same reason we laugh at comedy, we will scream at scary things. It is an urge, if you will, to obtain a primal, almost instinctual feeling. An unexpected moment that we wouldn't normally see or experience, is what we crave.
To have a good movie generally you need to have the audience suspenseful, or willing to sit in their sits. It's almost comical that horror movies have to make so scared you want to run away, but also make you so interested that you want to stay. The reason we want to stay is the basic human need for discovery and resolution. As a spectator in the audience, we are separated from the events actually taking place. When the monster pops out of the closet we jump or scream, but after the initial scare we know we're not in that situation, so we watch to see what happens next. We want to know more about the monster. "How did it get there? what is it? can we kill it? can we stop it? will those people even survive?"
The movie Poltergeist, I find, is a good example of a movie that instills the thought of making people yearn to know more. The main antagonist in the movie is never truly present, rather it is omniscient. It constantly tortures this family and the main question I kept asking myself is "why?". There is absolutely no reason for this family to be going through this. They moved into a new house, no old creepy building with a dark past. The family was normal, no kids suddenly becoming creepy or possessed-like. No weird family heirlooms that might be cursed. Later in the movie (SPOILERS) they find out it might be a dark spirit left over from a cemetery and after a lengthy ordeal they supposedly rid their house of the evil and everything's hunky dory. But the movie doesn't end.
Where a normal horror movie would have called it quits. Poltergeist keeps the movie rolling. Not only is the family STILL getting tortured, it's even worse than before. I am captivated, everything I thought I understood had completely been eliminated. In that moment, I knew that this was why horror movies enthrall us. It brings out our urge to know more. In an instant the movie had reintroduced the whole story again.
To finish my thoughts, a horror movie will leave you questioning and screaming. That is why I love them.
I have to really agree with your last point! I love horror, and the appeal comes in from wanting to know more, the curiosity of the unknown and the understanding that I would never want to face events like Poltergeist in real life. I think a lot of horror often forgets that curiosity is the driving force behind facing fear.
ReplyDeleteI think the idea in general of yearning for more information is definitely what drives us to watch the horror genre, as you said. I also like how curiosity is often looked for even by the people in the movies, which as we know usually kills them or leads them to be physically/mentally "punished", but for the audience, we are able to remain curious all while remaining completely devoid of the actual experience and it's consequences. I agree with you completely, horror is such an interesting genre in general because even though it is something that scares us immensely, it's still something we can pay attention to because our curiosity won't cost us our lives or well-being, often unlike the people in the actual movie.
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