sub genres in the horror genre
TRANSCRIPT
8/12/2019 Sub Genres in the Horror Genre
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Some Sub-Genres within
the Horror Genre:
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Sub Genre: Psychological Psychological horror aims to create discomfort by exposing common or universal
psychological and emotional vulnerabilities and fears, such as the shadowy parts of
the human psyche that most people repress or deny referred to in Jungian
psychology as the archetypal shadow characteristics: suspicion, distrust, self-doubt
and paranoia of others, themselves and the world. Thus, elements of psychological
horror focus on mental conflict. These become important as the characters face
perverse situations, often involving the supernatural, immorality and conspiracies.
While other horror media emphasize fantastical situations such as attacks by
monsters, psychological horror tends to keep the monsters hidden and to involvesituations more grounded in artistic realism. The sub genre is used to cause a
discomforting feeling within the audience because of the realism. Examples of
psychological horror films are Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’, David Fincher’s ‘Se7en’ and
Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick’s ‘The Blair Witch Project’.
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Sub Genre: SlasherThe slasher film in some cases includes conventions of both the thriller and action
genre. Conventionally, the plot follows a psychopathic killer with a motif,sometimes realistic, other times not, stalking and killing a sequence of victims
usually in a graphically violent manner. The killer most often uses a cutting tool
such as an; knife, axe or hammer to kill their victims. These objects are seen as
iconography and codes that relate to the slasher sub genre. The sub genre has its
own characteristics which set it apart from other sub genres in the horror genre.
Many people often consider Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ as the first slasher, but infact the
earliest film relating to ‘slasher-type’ conventions dates to the 1930’s – ‘Thirteen Women’ directed by George Archainbaud.
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Sub Genre: SupernaturalSupernatural horror films explore what is ‘other’ and ‘unknown’ to
humanity, that cannot be explained. In the past years, the supernatural subgenre has become associated with the psychological as the plots are often
presented as ‘real stories’. They include plots following the afterlife, the
devil and demonic possession, conventionally including ghosts and
poltergeists and religious references that cannot be proven. The
supernatural horror sub genre is the most commonly used and popular sub
genre around and among audiences in the present day, with mainstreamfeatures such as Oren Peli’s ‘Paranormal Activity’, Takashi Shimizu’s ‘The
Grudge’, and Daniel Stamm’s ‘The Last Exorcism’.
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Sub genre: VampireVampire films have been a gothic staple since the era of silent films.The
most popular cinematic adaptation of vampire fiction has been from Bram
Stoker's Dracula, with over 170 versions to date. As folklore vampires
are defined in their need to feed on blood and on their manipulative
nature; a theme held common through the many adaptations. Although
vampires are generally associated with the horror and sometimes
splatter genre, vampire films may also fall into the drama, action, science
fiction, romance, comedy or fantasy genres, among others. For example
the very popular ‘Twilight’ franchise unconventionally attracted younger
audiences with its plot heavily based around teenage romance.
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Sub Genre: WerewolfWerewolf fiction denotes the portrayal of werewolves and other shape
shifting man/woman-beasts with key codes of the genre including fullmoons. Werewolf literature includes folklore, legend, saga, fairy tales,
Gothic and Horror fiction, fantasy fiction and poetry. Such stories may be
supernatural, symbolic or allegorical. However, werewolf fiction is an
exceptionally diverse genre with ancient folkloric roots and manifold
modern re-interpretations. Two of the most popular werewolf films
include Joe Dante’s ‘The Howling’ and John Landis’ ‘An American
Werewolf in London’, both released in 1981.
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Sub Genre: Zombie
As fictional undead creatures, zombies are regularly encountered in horrorand fantasy themed works. They are typically depicted as mindless,
reanimated corpses with a hunger for human flesh, and particularly for
human brains in some depictions. Many consider George A. Romero's film
Night of the Living Dead to be the progenitor of these creatures. The
popularity of zombies in movies has led to them sometimes having been
taken out of their usual element of horror and thrown into other genres,for example the comedy film Shaun of the Dead. The "zombie apocalypse"
concept, in which the civilized world is brought low by a global zombie
infestation, has become a staple of modern popular art.