Imagine that tonight is movie night. The popcorn is made, the lights are low, everyone else is ready and the classic horror film Scream (Wes Craven 96) plays. The combination of horror and humor similar to the modern The Cabin in the woods (Drew Goddard 2012) has their unique message and some elements of a slasher film. In her essay “Her Body, Himself,” Clover writes a general description of a slasher film, “At the bottom of the horror heap lies the slasher (or splatter or shocker or stalker) film: the immensely generative story of a psychokiller who slashes to death a string of mostly female victims” (22). While in Scream these definitions may be obvious, Cabin in the Woods both critiques these traits while challenging them. By using Clover’s …show more content…
One of the first components of a slasher film and arguably the most important is the killer. Clover defines the killer as, “the psychotic product of a sick family, but still recognizable human” (30). In Scream the Killers are Billy (Skeet Ulrich) and Stu (Matthew Lillard) Billy comes from a broken home after abandonment of his mother and his hard working father wasn’t able to be there much for him. You see Billy’s dysfunction with his father in the scene where Billy and his father are questioned by the police. His father didn’t notice that Billy left that night to go to Cindy’s house, when he was presumably watching TV. It’s fair to assume that the only TV in the house was in the living because in the 90’s that is how most households had one main TV, because of this it would be safe to assume that his father wasn’t home at the time or else he would of noticed Billy’s absence or reappearance. Stu’s story wasn’t told much in Scream but one line he gives near the end gives
To begin with, some people would say they enjoy a horror movie that gets them scared out of their wits. They go see these movies once a month on average, for fun, each time choosing a newer sequel like “Final Destination” or “The evil Dead”. King says “When we pay our four or five bucks and seat ourselves at tenth-row center in a theater showing a horror movie we are daring the nightmare” (405). As a writer of best-sel...
Horror genre conventions are evident in both films and the way they are directed has given me obvious indications on the effect the horror conventions can have on a film when used well, and the adverse effect when not used well. Both Japanese and American society are evident in these films, and the style of the films are similar to the nationality of the two directors. Horror conventions are used in both films, but the way they are used are quite different, and these contrasting styles are key in how effective the two films are to their audience.
Clover, Carol J. Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton: Princeton Publishing, 1992.
Slowly she asked "Is anyone there?" as she walked down the dark deserted road. When she heard a loud sound she turned abruptly trying again "Hello?" Met with only silence she picked up here pace almost running down the dirt road. Her nerves had just began to calm when she heard "WRRRREEENNNNNRRRRRRR" as a chainsaw started behind her. Running she started looking behind her hoping that whoever it was, wouldn’t catch her. With her lack of concentration she tripped over her high heels and face plants into the dirt, giving the murderer a chance to catch up. Slowly he lowered the chainsaw and began cutting --CUT -- This is a common plot used in horror movies today. Movies have changed over the years. They were different five years ago, fifty years ago, and even a almost a century ago. Technologies have unthinkable things possible. They have allowed us to re-sink "the unsinkable ship." They have allowed us to see dinosaurs in all their brutal glory. We have seen imaginary creatures, only ever mentioned in stories brought to life. Movies have moved so far from the 1920's and 1930's. They have developed ideals, rules and even standards; but where did they begin? Did movies just fall out of the sky? Did they just come into being? No they began slowly, silently moving towards a new era, the era we today call "Pre-code Hollywood"
Misery, trauma, and isolation all have connections to the war time settings in “The Thing in the Forest.” In the short story, A.S. Byatt depicts elements captured from both fairy tale and horror genres in war times. During World War II, the two young girls Penny and Primrose endure the 1940s Blitz together but in different psychological ways. In their childhood, they learn how to use gas masks and carry their belongings in oversized suitcases. Both Penny and Primrose suffer psychologically effects by being isolated from their families’ before and after the war. Byatt depicts haunting effects in her short story by placing graphic details on the girls’ childhood experiences. Maria Margaronis, an author of a critical essay entitled “Where the Wild Things Are,” states that “Byatt’s tales of the supernatural depend on an almost hallucinatory precision for their haunting effects.” The hallucinatory details Byatt displays in her story have an almost unbelievable psychological reality for the girls. Penny and Primrose endure the psychological consequences and horrifying times during the Blitz along with the magical ideas they encounter as children. As adults they must return to the forest of their childhood and as individuals and take separate paths to confront the Thing, acknowledge its significance in their childhoods, and release themselves from the grip of the psychological trauma of war.
The genre of horror films is one that is vast and continually growing. So many different elements have been known to appear in horror films that it is often times difficult to define what is explicitly a horror film and what is not. Due to this ambiguous definition of horror the genre is often times divided into subgenres. Each subgenre of horror has a more readily identifiable list of classifications that make it easier to cast a film to a subgenre, rather than the entire horror genre. One such subgenre that is particularly interesting is that of the stalker film. The stalker film can be categorized as a member of the horror genre in two ways. First, the stalker film can be identified within the horror genre due to its connection with the easily recognizable subgenre of horror, the slasher film. Though many elements of the stalker film differ from those of the slasher film, the use of non-mechanical weapons and obvious sexual plot points can be used to categorize the stalker film as a subgenre of the slasher film. Secondly, the stalker film can be considered a member of the horror genre using Robin Wood’s discussion regarding horror as that which society represses. The films Fatal Attraction, The Fan, and The Crush will be discussed in support of this argument. (Need some connector sentence here to finish out the intro)
“I was raised to be charming, not sincere.” This is a famous line from the play and movie Into The Woods. The production follows a baker and his wife, and the characters from Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Little Red Riding Hood. The play Into The Woods was much better than the movie. The play was done by Stephen Sondheim. The new movie of Into The Woods is a Disney production. There is a more extensive plot, better casting, and better costumes in the play.
Film scholars around the world agree that all genres of film are part of the “genre cycle”. This cycle contains four different stages that a specific genre goes through. These stages are: primitive, classic, revisionist, and parody. Each stage that the genre goes through brings something different to that genre’s meaning and what the audience expects. I believe that looking at the horror genre will be the most beneficial since it has clearly gone through each stage.
Whilst this is happening the Halloween theme music is playing in the background, this music is very high pitched and uses string instruments to create horror and suspense for the viewers. Once the credits have been shown there is a 'vls' (very long shot) of the house this is used to set the scene, this is a subjective point of view from the killer .This can be related to the German expressionism where they would use bumpy camera movement to seize the audiences concentration .They use a handheld camera to do this scene as it emphasises the killers movements to the audience. As the Killer begins to make his way around the house be looks up to see the light go off. When this happens there is a sharp shrill sound which enforces the killer's actions.
Parker, Sam. Horror Through The Decades. Bauer Consumer Media, 2009. Web. 1 Oct. 2013. .
People flock to horror movies each year. Usually to be scared. Another is to solve the question of Who done it? Unfortunately, a lot of these horror movies fail to scare people or make the killer so obvious the audience gets bored. Occasionally, there are a few horror movies that stick out. Scream, directed by Wes Craven, is one of them. Wes Craven is always toying with the viewer's fears. Always finding ways to scare the audience at every turn. He also plays with the viewer's head, and has them second guessing themselves. How does he do it? Well, as one of the characters in the movie exclaims, "There's a formula to it. A very simple formula. Everybody's a suspect!" This paper will discuss how Craven uses sound, camera shots, and mise en scene
Each of the teenagers in the group plays an archetypal role that can found in many of the horror films of the last thirty years. Jules plays the role of ‘The Whore’, Curt ‘The Athlete’, Holden ‘The Scholar’, Marty ‘The Fool’, and Dana ‘The Virgin’. The remaining two in the third act of the film, Marty and Dana, discover that the order in which they group dies can be flexible, as long as ‘The Whore’ dies first and ‘The Virgin’ lives or is the last to perish. This revelation for the characters partly acts as a critique of the moralistic view of sex as resulting in death in the traditional slasher movie. For example in films that established the slasher in the horror genre like John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’ (1978), all of the characters that engage
The only real way to truly understand a story is to understand all aspects of a story and their meanings. The same goes for movies, as they are all just stories being acted out. In Thomas Foster's book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”, Foster explains in detail the numerous ingredients of a story. He discusses almost everything that can be found in any given piece of literature. The devices discussed in Foster's book can be found in most movies as well, including in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic, “Pulp Fiction”. This movie is a complicated tale that follows numerous characters involved in intertwining stories. Tarantino utilizes many devices to make “Pulp Fiction” into an excellent film. In this essay, I will demonstrate how several literary devices described in Foster's book are put to use in Tarantino’s film, “Pulp Fiction”, including quests, archetypes, food, and violence.
Too many horror films provide scares and screams throughout their respective cinemas. Not many viewers follow what kind of model the films follow to appease their viewers. However, after reading film theorist Carol Clover’s novel, watching one of the films she associates in the novel “Halloween”, and also watching the movie “Nightmare on Elm Street” I say almost every “slasher” or horror film follows a model similar to Clover’s. The model is a female is featured as a primary character and that females tend to always overcome a situation at some point throughout the film.
In society there is a longing for a story to have a nice and neat happy ending. Broadway and the theater originally would give this to their audience, especially in America. Give the audience what the want! They want happy endings that mirror their own values and interpretations of how the world should be and at the end of it should be, “and they all lived happily ever after.” The fairy tale ending is something society hopes, dreams, and strives for since we could listen to our parents read us fairy tales with these sweet stories of finding true love and having to fight the odds to be the Prince or Princess you deserve to be. With Into the Woods, Lapine and Sondheim sought out to explore what could go wrong with “happily ever after.” Effectively leaving the audience with the adage, “be careful what you ask for…”