Horror film

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A famous scene from the 1922 German horror film Nosferatu

A horror film is a film that seeks to elicit fear.[1] Initially inspired by literature from authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley,[2] horror has existed as a film genre for more than a century. The macabre and the supernatural are frequent themes. Horror may also overlap with the fantasy, supernatural fiction, and thriller genres.

Horror films often aim to evoke viewers' nightmares, fears, revulsions and terror of the unknown. Plots within the horror genre often involve the intrusion of an evil force, event, or personage into the everyday world. Prevalent elements include ghosts, extraterrestrials, vampires, werewolves, demons, Satanism, evil clowns, gore, torture, vicious animals, evil witches, monsters, zombies, cannibalism, psychopaths, natural, ecological or man-made disasters, and serial killers.[3]

Some sub-genres of horror film include low-budget horror, action horror, comedy horror, body horror,[4] disaster horror, found footage,[5] holiday horror, horror drama, psychological horror,[6] science fiction horror, slasher, supernatural horror, gothic horror, natural horror, zombie horror, disaster films, first-person horror, and teen horror.



The first depiction of the supernatural on screen appear in several of the short silent films created by the French pioneer filmmaker Georges Méliès in the late 1890s. The best known of these early supernatural-based works is the 3-minute short film Le Manoir du Diable (1896), also known in English as The Haunted Castle or The House of the Devil. The film is sometimes credited as being the first ever horror film.[7] In The Haunted Castle, a mischievous devil appears inside a medieval castle and harasses the visitors. Méliès' other popular horror film is La Caverne maudite (1898), which translates literally to "the accursed cave". The film, also known for its English title The Cave of the Demons, tells the story of a woman stumbling over a cave that is populated by the spirits and skeletons of people who died there.[7] Méliès would also make other short films that historians consider now as horror-comedies. Une nuit terrible (1896), which translates to A Terrible Night, tells a story of a man who tries to get a good night's sleep but ends up wrestling a giant spider. His other film, L'auberge ensorcelée (1897), or The Bewitched Inn, features a story of a hotel guest getting pranked and tormented by an unseen presence.[8]

Scene from Georges Méliès 1897 short film Le Manoir du diable, or The Haunted Castle

In 1897, the accomplished American photographer-turned director George Albert Smith created The X-Ray Fiend (1897), a horror-comedy that came out a mere two years after x-rays were invented. The film shows a couple of skeletons courting each other. An audience full of people unaccustomed to the idea would have found it frightening and otherworldly.[9] The next year, Smith created the short film Photographing a Ghost (1898), considered a precursor to the paranormal investigation subgenre. The film portrays three men attempting to photograph a ghost, only to fail time and again as the ghost eludes the men and throws chairs at them.

Satán se divierte, or Satan at Play (1907)

Japan also made early forays into the horror genre. In 1898, a Japanese film company called Konishi Honten released two horror films both written by Ejiro Hatta; Shinin No Sosei (Resurrection of a Corpse), and Bake Jizo (Jizo the Spook)[10] The film Shinin No Sosei told the story of a dead man who comes back to life after having fallen from a coffin that two men were carrying. (the writer Hatta played the dead man, while the coffin-bearers were played by Konishi employees.) Though there are no records of the cast, crew, or plot of Bake Jizo, it was likely based on the Japanese legend of Jizo statues, believed to provide safety and protection to children. The presence of the word bake—which can be translated to "spook," "ghost," or "phantom"—may imply a haunted or possessed statue.[11] (In Japan, Jizō, or respectfully as Ojizō-sama, is a beloved divinity who is seen as the guardian of children, and in particular, children who died before their parents. He has been worshipped as the guardian of the souls of mizuko, the souls of stillborn, miscarried, or aborted fetuses.)



The Selig Polyscope Company in the United States produced one of the first film adaptations of a horror-based novel. In 1908, the company released Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, now a lost film. It is based on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic gothic novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, published 15 years prior, about a man who transforms between two contrasting personas. (The book tells the classic story of a man with an unpredictably dual nature: usually very good, but sometimes shockingly evil instead.)



In 1910, Edison Studios produced the first filmed version of Mary Shelley's classic gothic 1818 novel Frankenstein, the popular story of a scientist creating a hideous, sapient creature after a scientific experiment. Adapted to the screen for the first time by J. Searle Dawley for Edison, Frankenstein (1910) was deliberately designed to de-emphasize the horrific aspects of the story and focus on the story's mystical and psychological elements.[14] Yet, the macabre nature of its source material made the film synonymous with the horror film genre.[15]


In March 1911, the hour-long Italian silent film epic L'Inferno was screened in the Teatro Mercadante in Naples.[16] The film, which was adapted from the first part of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and visually based on Gustave Doré's haunting illustrations, became an international success and is arguably the first true blockbuster in all of cinema. It is also regarded by many scholars as the finest film adaptation of any of Dante's works to date. The film, which was directed by three artists; Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, and Giuseppe de Liguoro, is worth noting and well-remembered for its stunning visualization of the nine circles of Hell. Its stunning special effects is also very well noted especially for its presentation of a massive Lucifer with wings that stretch out behind him in front of a black void. He is seen devouring the Roman figures Brutus and Gaius in a disgusting display of double exposure and scale manipulation. The film is also able to capture some of the manic, tortuous, and bizarre imagery and themes of Dante's complex masterwork.[17]

In the 1910s Georges Méliès would continue producing his Faustian films, the most significant of this period was Le Chevalier des Neiges (The Knight of the Snows) (1912). The film was Méliès' last film with Faustian themes,[18] and the last of many films in which the filmmaker appeared as the Devil.[19] The film tells a story of a princess kidnapped by Satan and thrown into a dungeon. Her lover, the brave Knight of the Snows, must then go on a journey to rescue her. Special effects in the film were created with stage machinery, pyrotechnics, substitution splices, superimpositions, and dissolves.[19] It is again, among few of the best examples of trick films that Georges Méliès and Segundo de Chomón helped popularized.



In 1913, German directors Stellan Rye and Paul Wegener made the silent horror film Der Student von Prag, popularly known for its English title as The Student of Prague, loosely based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The film tells a story of a student who inadvertently makes a Faustian bargain. In the film, the student tells a stranger to make him a rich man. So the stranger visits the student in his dorm room where he conjures up a hundred thousand pieces of gold and a contract for him to sign. In return, the stranger is granted to take anything he wants from the room and chooses to take the student's mirror. Upon moving it from the wall, a doppelgänger steps out and causes trouble. (In Western culture, a doppelgänger is a supernatural or ghostly double or look-alike of a specific person and usually seen as a harbinger of bad luck.) Cinematographer Guido Seeber utilized groundbreaking camera tricks to create the effect of the doppelgänger by using a mirror double which produces a seamless double exposure. The film was written by Hanns Heinz Ewers, a noted writer of horror and fantasy stories and his involvement with the screenplay lent a much needed air of respectability to the fledgling art form of horror film and German Expressionism [21]

Meanwhile, from November 1915 to June 1916, French writer/director Louis Feuillade released a weekly serial entitled Les Vampires where the filmmaker exploited the power of horror imagery to great effect. Consisting of 10 parts or episodes and roughly 7 hours long if combined, Les Vampires is considered to be one of the longest films ever made. The series tells a story of a criminal gang called the Vampires, who play upon their supernatural name and style to instill fear in the public and the police who desperately want to put a stop to them.[22] Marked as Feuillade's legendary opus, Les Vampires is considered a precursor to movie thrillers. The series is also a close cousin to the surrealist movement.[23]


Paul Wegener followed up his success with The Student of Prague by adapting a story inspired by the ancient Jewish legend of the golem, an anthropomorphic being that is magically created entirely from clay or mud. Wegener teamed up with Henrik Galeen to make Der Golem (1915). The film, which is still partially lost, tells a story of an antiques dealer who finds a golem, a clay statue, brought to life centuries before. The dealer resurrects the golem as a servant, but the golem falls in love with the antiques dealer's wife. As she does not return his love, the golem commits a series of murders. Wegener then made a sequel, this time he teamed up with co-director Rochus Gliese, and made Der Golem und die Tänzerin (1917), or The Golem and the Dancing Girl as it is known in English. It is now considered a lost film. Wegener would make a third golem film three years later to round up his Der Golem trilogy.








In 1924, German filmmaker Paul Leni made another representative German Expressionist film with Das Wachsfigurenkabinett, or Waxworks as it is commonly known. The horror film tells a story of a writer who accepts a job from a wax museum to write a series of stories about the exhibits on Harun al-Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad, Ivan the Terrible, the Tsar of All Rus' and Jack the Ripper, the unknown serial killer of London in order to boost business. Although Waxworks is often credited as a horror film, it is an anthology film that goes through several genres including a fantasy adventure, a historical film, and a horror film through its various episodes. Waxworks contain many elements present in a German Expressionist movie. The film features deep shadows, moving shapes, and warped staircases. The director said of the film, "I have tried to create sets so stylized that they evidence no idea of reality." Waxworks was director Paul Leni’s last film in Germany before he heading to Hollywood to make some of the most important horror films of the late silent era.[27]

Though the word horror to describe the film genre would not be used until the 1930s (when Universal Pictures began to release their initial monster films), earlier American productions often relied on horror themes. Many of these early films were considered dark melodramas because of their stock characters and emotion-heavy plots that focused on romance, violence, suspense, and sentimentality.[28]

In 1923, Universal Pictures started producing films with horror elements. This would become the first phase of the studio's Universal Classic Monsters series that would continue for three more decades. The first of these films was The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) starring Lon Chaney as the hunchback Quasimodo. The film was adapted from the classic French gothic novel of the same name written by Victor Hugo in 1833, about a horribly deformed bell ringer in the cathedral of Notre-Dame. The film elevated Chaney, already a well-known character actor, to full star status in Hollywood, and also helped set a standard for many later horror films.

Other notable examples of Universal Studios' horror films include The Phantom of the Opera (1925), The Cat and the Canary (1927), The Unknown (1927), and The Man Who Laughs (1928).


Other European countries also, contributed to the genre during this period. Victor Sjöström's The Phantom Carriage (Sweden, 1920) is a cautionary tale about a supernatural legend, Benjamin Christensen's Häxan (Denmark/Sweden, 1922) is a documentary-style, horror film, about witchcraft and superstition, and in 1928, Frenchman, Jean Epstein produced an influential film, The Fall of the House of Usher, based on the Poe tale.

Il mostro di Frankenstein (1921), the only Italian horror film before the late 1950s, is now considered lost.[30]


Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster
in the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein.

In the 1930s Universal Pictures continued making movies with horror elements as they began to churn in a successful film series based on Gothic horror. Bela Lugosi stars in Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) and then Boris Karloff stars in James Whale's Frankenstein (1931), both films considered classic adaptations of the popular horror characters. The next year, Karloff would play the titular character in The Mummy (1932). Make-up artist Jack Pierce would be responsible for creating the make-up of many of the classic 1930's monsters for Universal Studios. He would also come to design the Satanic make-up for Lugosi in the independently produced White Zombie (1932).

After the release of The Mummy, Universal followed a trilogy of films based on the tales of Edgar Allan Poe; Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), The Black Cat (1934), and The Raven (1935), the latter two of which teamed Lugosi with Karloff. Universal then began releasing sequels including Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Dracula's Daughter (1936). They also made the first mainstream werewolf picture, Werewolf of London (1935) which wasn't a box office triumph during release despite being revered by audiences today.

Other studios followed Universal's lead. MGM's controversial Freaks (1932), which featured characters played by people who had real deformities, frightened audiences at the time. The studio even disowned the film, and it remained banned, in the United Kingdom, for 30 years.[31] Paramount Pictures' Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) is remembered for its innovative use of photographic filters to create Jekyll's transformation before the camera.[32] And RKO created the highly successful and influential monster movie, King Kong (1933). With the progression of the genre, actors like Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi were beginning to build entire careers in horror.



In the 1940s, Val Lewton became a well known figure in early B-horror cinema for making low-budget movies for RKO Pictures, including I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Body Snatcher (1945), and Cat People (1942), a film deemed by the United States' National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".





The Queen of Spades (1949) is a fantasy/horror film about an elderly countess who strikes a bargain with the devil and exchanges her soul for the ability to always win at cards. Wes Anderson ranked it as the sixth best British film.[33] Martin Scorsese said that The Queen of Spades is a "stunning film" and one of "the few true classics of supernatural cinema."[34] And Dennis Schwartz of Ozus' World Movie Reviews called it "A masterfully filmed surreal atmospheric supernatural tale".[35]


With advances in technology, the tone of horror films shifted from the Gothic towards contemporary concerns. A popular horror subgenre began to emerge: the Doomsday film.[36] Low-budget productions featured humanity overcoming threats such as alien invasions and deadly mutations to people, plants, and insects. Popular films of this genre include Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and The Blob (1958).


The 1950s is also well known for creature feature and Ray Harryhausen's visual effects work in many of the genre's films. His work on The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) is considered to be the film which kick started the 50s wave of monster movies and the concept of combining nuclear paranoia with the genre. The film was about a dinosaur that was awakened from frozen ice in the Arctic Circle by an atomic bomb test. Other creature films include It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), Tarantula (1955), and The Giant Behemoth (1959).

Hollywood directors and producers found ample opportunity for audience exploitation through gimmicks. House of Wax (1953) used the advent of 3-D film to draw audiences, while The Tingler (1959) used electric buzzers to scare audiences in their theater seats. Filmmakers continued to merge elements of science fiction and horror over the following decades. Considered a "pulp masterpiece"[37] of the era was The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), based on Richard Matheson's existentialist novel. The film conveyed the fears of living in the Atomic Age and the terror of social alienation.


The United Kingdom began to emerge as a major producer of horror films around this time.[40] The Hammer company focused on the genre for the first time, enjoying huge international success from films involving classic horror characters which were shown in color for the first time.[41] Drawing on Universal's precedent, many films produced were Frankenstein and Dracula remakes, followed by many sequels. Christopher Lee starred in a number of Hammer Horror films, including The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), which Professor Patricia MacCormac called the "first really gory horror film, showing blood and guts in colour".[42] His most influential role was as Count Dracula, with Lee’s portrayal becoming the archetypal vampire in popular culture. The academic Christopher Frayling writes of Lee’s 1958 film, “Dracula introduced fangs, red contact lenses, décolletage, ready-prepared wooden stakes and – in the celebrated credits sequence – blood being spattered from off-screen over the Count's coffin.”[43] Lee also introduced a dark, brooding sexuality to the character, with Tim Stanley stating, “Lee’s sensuality was subversive in that it hinted that women might quite like having their neck chewed on by a stud”.[44] Other British companies contributed to a boom in horror film production in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s.

In television, the anthology series The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) has become a staple in horror fiction.[45] Each episode presents a standalone story in which characters find themselves dealing with often disturbing or unusual events, an experience described as entering "the Twilight Zone". Although predominantly science-fiction, the show's paranormal and Kafkaesque events leaned the show towards fantasy and horror. The phrase "twilight zone," is used today to describe surreal experiences.


Released in May 1960, the British psychological thriller film, Peeping Tom (1960) by Michael Powell, is a progenitor of the contemporary "slasher film",[46] though Alfred Hitchcock cemented the subgenre with Psycho released also in the same year.[47] Hitchcock, considered to be the "Master of Suspense" didn't set out to frighten fans the way many other traditional horror filmmakers do. Instead, he helped pioneer the art of psychological suspense. As a result, he managed to frighten his viewers by getting to the root of their deepest fears.[48] One of his most frightening films besides Psycho is The Birds (1963), where a seemingly idyllic town is overrun by violent birds.

France continued the mad scientist theme with the film Eyes Without a Face (1960). The story follows Parisian police in search of the culprit responsible for the deaths of young women whose faces have been mutilated.[49] In Criterion's description of the film, they say it include "images of terror, of gore, [and] of inexplicable beauty".[50]












Suzy (Jessica Harper, right) and Sara (Stefania Casini, left) in Suspiria, a giallo horror film.

The 1970s began a new age for horror films with the transition from "classic" to modern horror. Horror films started to focus more on aggressiveness and ruthlessness while also focusing more on artistic qualities and societal themes.[54] This era of horror films has been regarded as a "golden age" that transformed the genre by having it "grow up" while showing that horror can be artistic.[55]


This era changed the usual setting for horror films, using every-day settings. Along with this came a change from focusing on defeating evil every time to having some instances where good fails before succeeding.[55] The critical and popular success of Rosemary's Baby, led to the release of more films with occult themes in the 1970s. The Omen (1976), where a man realizes that his five-year-old adopted son is the Antichrist. Invincible to human intervention, Demons became villains in many horror films with a postmodern style and a dystopian worldview.


In the 1970s, Italian filmmakers Mario Bava, Riccardo Freda, Antonio Margheriti, and Dario Argento developed giallo horror films that became classics and influenced the genre in other countries. Representative films include: Twitch of the Death Nerve, Deep Red and Suspiria.






A cycle of slasher films began in the 1970s and 1980s with the creation of Halloween by John Carpenter. "Halloween" was a significant influence on the horror industry and has become one of the quintessential forerunners of commercial horror films, grossing 70 Million usd on a shoestring budget of $300,000-325,000.[59] Its influence and inspiration can still be seen in films today.













In the first half of the 1990s, the genre still contained many of the themes from the 1980s. The slasher films, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Child's Play, all saw sequels in the 1990s, most of which met with varied amounts of success at the box office but all were panned by critics, with the exception of Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) and the hugely successful film, The Silence of the Lambs (1991). The latter, which stars Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, is considered a major horror movie of all times.[61] Misery (1990) also deals with a psychopath, and the film received critical acclaim for Kathy Bates's performance as the psychopathic Annie Wilkes.







Monster horror was quite popular in the 1990s. Tremors (1990) is the first installment of the Tremors franchise. Lake Placid (1999) is another monster horror film, written by David E. Kelley and directed by Steve Miner.

Another successful horror film is Audition, a 1999 Japanese film based on the novel of the same name, directed by Takashi Miike. Around this period, Japanese horror started becoming popular in English speaking countries.


Ravenous (1999) starring Guy Pearce and directed by Antonia Bird is a "quirky"[63] and gruesome movie based on the real life horror story of the Donner party that got stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1847 due to snow.[64]


The decade started with American Psycho (2000) directed by Mary Harron starring Christian Bale as a charismatic serial killer and Manhattan business mogul. The movie was highly controversial when released and remains a cult classic today.[65] Scary Movie (2000), a comedy horror directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans parodied of the horror, slasher, and mystery genres. The film received mixed reviews from critics. By contrast, Valentine (2001) was a conventional horror film. It had some success at the box office, but was derided by critics for being formulaic and relying on foregone horror film conventions. The Others (2001) was hugely successful, winning and being further nominated for many awards. It is a 2001 Spanish-American supernatural gothic horror film with elements of psychological horror. It was written, directed, and scored by Alejandro Amenábar. It stars Nicole Kidman and Fionnula Flanagan.


Several horror film adaptations from comic books and video games were produced. 30 Days of Night (2007) is based on the comic book miniseries of the same name. The story focuses on an Alaskan town beset by vampires as it enters into a 30-day long polar night. Comic book adaptations like the Blade series, Constantine (2005), and Hellboy (2004) also became box office successes. The Resident Evil video game franchise was adapted into a film released in March 2002, and several sequels followed. Other video game adaptations like Doom (2005) and Silent Hill (2006) also had moderate box office success.


Another trend is the emergence of psychology to scare audiences, rather than gore. The Others (2001) proved to be a successful example of a psychological horror film. A minimalist approach which was equal parts Val Lewton's theory of "less is more", usually employing the low-budget techniques utilized on The Blair Witch Project (1999), has been evident, particularly in the emergence of Asian horror movies which have been remade into successful Americanized versions, such as The Ring (2002), The Grudge (2004), Dark Water (2005), and Pulse (2006). In March 2008, China banned the movies from its market.[66] Credo (2008) and Triangle (2009) are two British psychological horror films. What Lies Beneath (2000) is a supernatural horror film directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer as a couple who experience a strange haunting of their home. Orphan (2009) is a notable psychological horror film. Another psychological horror film is 1408 (2007), based on Stephen King's 1999 short story of the same name. Two Australian horror films that deal with teenagers are Lake Mungo (2008) and The Loved Ones (2009).


The Australian film Wolf Creek (2005) written, co-produced, and directed by Greg McLean revolves around three backpackers who find themselves taken captive and after a brief escape, hunted down by Mick Taylor in the Australian outback. The film was ambiguously marketed as being "based on true events"; the plot bore elements reminiscent of the real-life murders of tourists by Ivan Milat in the 1990s, and Bradley Murdoch in 2001; and contained more extreme violence. An extension of this trend was the emergence of a type of horror with emphasis on depictions of torture, suffering, and violent deaths, (variously referred to as "horror porn", "torture porn", "splatterporn" and "gore-nography") with films such as Ghost Ship (2002), The Collector (2009), Saw (2004), Hostel (2005), and their respective sequels, frequently singled out as examples of emergence of this subgenre.[68] In 2010 the Saw film series held the Guinness World Record of the highest-grossing horror franchise in history.[69] Finally, with the arrival of Paranormal Activity (2007), which was well received by critics and an excellent reception at the box office, minimalist horror approach started by The Blair Witch Project was reaffirmed. Cloverfield (2008) is another found footage horror film. The Mist (2007) is a science-fiction horror film based on the 1980 novella of the same name by Stephen King. Antichrist (2009) is an English-language Danish experimental horror film written and directed by Lars von Trier, and starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a 2005 legal drama horror film directed by Scott Derrickson, loosely based on the story of Anneliese Michel. The Children (2008) is British horror film focusing on the mayhem created by several children. Another 2008 British horror film is Eden Lake.





You're Next (2011) and The Cabin in the Woods (2012) led to a return to the slasher genre; the latter was intended also as a critical satire of torture porn.[78] The Green Inferno (2015) pays homage to the controversial horror film, Cannibal Holocaust (1980). The Australian psychological horror film, The Babadook (2014) directed by Jennifer Kent received critical acclaim and won many awards. It Follows (2014) subverted traditional horror tropes of sexuality and slasher films and enjoyed commercial and critical success. The Conjuring Universe is a series of horror films which deal with the paranormal. The series includes The Conjuring (2013), The Conjuring 2 (2016), Annabelle (2014), Annabelle: Creation (2017) and The Nun (2018). Sinister (2012) is a British-American supernatural horror film directed by Scott Derrickson and written by Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill. Another notable supernatural horror film is Insidious (2010). The Witch (2015) is a historical period supernatural horror film written and directed by Robert Eggers in his directorial debut, which follows a Puritan family encountering forces of evil in the woods beyond their New England farm. Get Out (2017) received universal acclaim from critics and audiences alike. Its plot follows a black man who uncovers a disturbing secret when he meets the family of his white girlfriend. Adapted from the Stephen King novel, It (2017) set a box office record for horror films by grossing $123.1 million on opening weekend in the United States and nearly $185 million globally.[79] Gerald's Game (2017) is a psychological horror film based on Stephen King's novel of the same name. Other horror films include Frozen (2010), Black Swan (2010), Devil (2010), The Innkeepers (2011), Oculus (2013), Under the Skin (2013), Mama (2013), Green Room (2015), The Invitation (2015), Hush (2016), Lights Out (2016), Don't Breathe (2016), The Endless, Revenge (2017 film), Mother! (2017), It Comes at Night (2017), and Unsane (2018), Upgrade (film) (2018), Overlord (2018 film), Mandy (2018), Suspiria, Apostle, CAM, Wildling, Ghost Stories, Cargo, Terrifier, Pyewacket, The Strangers: Prey at Night, Lowlife, Marrowbone, Downrange, Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum.




The success of non-English language films continued with the Swedish film, Marianne (2011), while Let the Right One In (2008) was the subject of a Hollywood remake, Let Me In (2010). South Korean horror produced I Saw the Devil (2010) and Train to Busan (2016). Raw is a 2016 French-Belgian horror drama written and directed by Julia Ducournau, and starring Garance Marillier. Goodnight Mommy (2014) (German: Ich seh, Ich seh) is an Austrian horror film. Verónica is a 2017 Spanish horror film loosely based on real events. "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" (2014) directed by Ana Lily Amirpour is vampire film in Persian that transcends simple vampire and horror categorization.[80] Untamed (2016) directed by Amat Escalante is a unique psychological-sexual thriller.[81]

The 2017 slasher film, Happy Death Day follows a college student who is murdered on her birthday and begins reliving the day repeatedly, at which point she sets out to find the killer and stop her death. It grossed $125 million worldwide on a $4.8 million budget and received generally positive reviews, with critics deeming the film entertaining while acknowledging the familiar premise,[82] and describing it as "Groundhog Day meets Scream".[83] A sequel, Happy Death Day 2U, was released in February 2019.




Influences on society[edit]

Horror films' evolution throughout the years has given society a new approach to resourcefully utilize their benefits. The horror film style has changed over time, but, in 1996, Scream set off a "chain of copycats", leading to a new variety of teenage, horror movies.[90] This new approach to horror films began to gradually earn more and more revenue as seen in the progress of Scream movies; the first movie earned $6 million and the third movie earned $101 million.[90] The importance that horror films have gained in the public and producers’ eyes is one obvious effect on our society.

Horror films' income expansion is only the first sign of the influences of horror flicks. The role of women and how women see themselves in the movie industry has been altered by the horror genre. Early horror films such as My Bloody Valentine (1981), Halloween (1978), and Friday the 13th (1980) were produced mostly for male audiences in order to "feed the fantasies of young men".[91] This idea is no longer prevalent in horror films, as women have become not only the main audience and fans of horror films but also the main protagonists of contemporary horror films.[92] Movie makers have also begun to integrate topics more broadly associated with other genres into their films in order to grow audience appeal.[91]


Influences internationally[edit]



See also[edit]


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  2. ^ "12 Horror Films that were Actually Adapted from Novels | Nightmare on Film Street - Horror Movie Podcast, News and Reviews". nofspodcast.com. 2018-08-11. Retrieved 2018-08-17.
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  34. ^ "Tale of luckless director dealt bad hand". The Sunday Herald.
  39. ^ "Fangs for the memories: The A-Z of vampires" (31 October 2009). The Independent.
  41. ^ "Hammer Horror". British Film Institute. 27 December 2017.
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