Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Evolution of Horror

Watching horror movies has become something of a pastime for my wife and I, featuring day-long marathons featuring different types of Horror. Due to a combination of our own desensitized views to violence and our disdain for the American cinema, we’ve found ourselves watching foreign horror films, and being genuinely scared by what we saw! This of course led me to think of how our own genre has evolved over the years, of how each generation contributed and how each generation’s idea of terror seemed to take on drastic changes. And from the early years of silent cinema to today’s surround sound theaters with 3-D effects, the changes have been so profound that the entire method in which terror was delivered had changed, forced to mostly by our own collective experiences and with the technology.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Evil in Modern Horror

       When I think of horror, of what truly makes a good scary movie, the only thing that comes to mind is the Disney classic Fantasia, specifically the Night on Bald Mountain. The monstrous demon that emerged from that mountaintop was, bar none, the most terrifying creature I had ever seen in my life at the time. As I’ve grown older, and seen more things, I still remember that evil figure and the terror he instilled in me that, to this day, I strive to feel once again. What can compare to this literal archetypal figure, modeled after centuries of contrived thoughts of how demons could behave?