Subject Matter

Subject Matter

In our group we have decided to focus our thriller on Horror so I will be researching Horror so that we can represent issues correctly such as the characters and the mise en scene.

Horror is one of the oldest film genres with horror films dating back to 1896, however the first production length horror was ‘Nosferatu’ in 1922 which was a adaptation on Bran stokers ‘Dracula’ and since then most horror films are based on an old tale or supernatural being such as werewolves and Frankenstein's monster however in modern times monsters have become outdated and the new threat in Horrors has now become humans as the acts in the movies are performed by real people instead of monsters it gives a whole new level to horror as it can make the audience think that all the terrible acts in the movie could happen to them.

It has also appeared in modern times that there are many stereotypes in horrors for example the police never believe the person no matter what, the girl who is so scared she becomes useless and having the black guy die first. The characters themselves are also stereotyped in that a young good looking girl is usually a cheer leader and a white well built and handsome teenager is usually the star of the sports team. 

In recent horrors there are three types of human villains which are portrayed more commonly throughout a range of modern day horrors. The intelligent type, the crazy type and the unbearably strong type. The intelligent type of killer is a generally new concept to horror films, I have watched such films as ‘Saw’, ‘Hostel’ and ‘Hannibal’ and noted that all of the killers share common features which are that they usually keep their identity secret until the end of the movie and kill through manipulating others and setting traps, the killers are usually physically weak however they have a high intelligence and are cunning they are also extremely sadistic.

The crazy type of killer is usually portrayed as an ordinary person who was affected by an event which usually leads them to killing all the people who are close to them or in the case of ‘The Devils Rejects’ they were brought up crazy and to kill people. The crazy killer can also be depicted as mentally ill and they are also shown to be selfish and conniving using things like poison to secretly kill someone but they can also become reckless and lose all rational thought. The crazy killer is usually played by a woman as there is the stereotype in saying ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ I have watched the films ‘The Devils Rejects’ where there are in fact three crazy killers ‘Captain Spaulding’, ‘Otis B. Driftwood’ and ‘Baby Firefly’ who are all from the ‘the Devils rejects’, the movie is based on torturing and shocking violence.  

Another film I watched to gather information on crazy killers was ‘Fatal attraction’ even though the film is not a horror the killer does fit the description of a crazy killer as the woman ‘Alex Forrest’ has a mental disorder and tries to kill her lover’s wife so that they can be together, Alex is first shown as normal but a bit scandalous when she is introduced to the audience as the editor of a publishing company but as the film progresses we see her mentality get worse and worse as she goes from trying to commit suicide to stalking then to boiling a rabbit and then trying to kill someone and the last film I saw which involved a crazy killer was ‘The Shining’ which is all about a writer called Jack Torrance who becomes a caretaker of a hotel and becomes snowbound and starts to descend into madness and eventually tries to kill his wife and son. All three of these movies have become memorable because the killers are normal people they make the audience put themselves in their position as the villain descends into madness.

The third type of killer is the strong unstoppable type. They are usually linked with the supernatural as they keep coming back to life even though people are sure they are dead, they also have a unique appearance and sometimes have a disfigured face and they hardly speak or may not speak at all as there huge stature is usually intimidating enough. They are usually shown to have originated there psychopathic tendencies from an event in their childhood for example in ‘Friday 13^th’ Jason drowned in a lake and no one helped him. In the movie ‘Halloween’ the killer Michael Myers was a deranged child who was a psychopath and was in fact based on a real mental patient. Sometimes the strong type is also mentally challenged and has the mindset of a child for example Pluto in ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ and Tiny from ‘House of a 1000 corpses’. The killer also has a signature weapon that people can associate with them for example Jason’s machete, Michael’s knife and Pluto’s axe, the weapon is usually a big and heavy weapon which is used to demonstrate the inhuman strength of the killers when they swing the weapon around so easily.