“Do you like scary movies?” purred a sinister voice over the telephone, and immediately Scream had marked itself out as something new in a tired genre. When it was released in 1996, the classic slasher franchises had all pretty much ran out of steam. Scream was different, it was a breath of fresh air: smart and self-referential, it reminded horror fans what they loved about the genre in the first place, and scared them silly at the same time. Scream 4’s brilliance was that it took old tropes and remixed them, a blending of old and new. Director Wes Craven was already accomplished, he directed films such as The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, and A Nightmare on Elm Street- and the previous three Screams before Scream 4 came …show more content…
When she’s first introduced in the series, she’s already been through some serious trauma: The film begins with Sidney’s return to Woodsboro, the town where the original murders took place. Sidney meets up with her cousin Jill (Emma Roberts) and quickly finds out that a new wave of murders has begun with a striking similarity to the previous three films. With the help of her old friend and recently promoted sheriff (David Arquette) and his wife Gale (Courtney Cox) it seems as though Scream 4 is the passing of the torch between the old damaged characters and the new ones. Scream 4 utilizes today’s millennial culture of technology, Youtube, and blogs to once again reinvent the slasher genre. Scream 4 combines just the right amount of comedy within the story to still stay true to the genre and pokes fun at the previous three films and the genre as a whole. Although there is nothing significantly new with regards to the story of Scream 4, the mystery of who is under the mask was well done and keeps the viewer guessing. The identity of the masked killer is a surprising one and makes an interesting comment on fame in modern
...dience long after the film reels have stopped turning. The idea of a “scary movie” could be innocuous enough, if it is simply frights and ghoulish images, but Nosferatu raised the bar and discovered how to delve into a collective mindset and produce a truly unsettling product. Germany’s residual shame and concern regarding World War I made Nosferatu a gripping, telling exploration of a nation’s psyche.
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.
“Thriller” is a film, literary, and television genre that contains elements of suspense, anxiety and excitement. Within the thriller genre, there are multiple subgenres such as the mystery thriller, crime thriller, horror thriller, erotic thriller, psychological thriller, and the list still grows today. Many thriller films contain elements from multiple subgenres, which in turn helps to create the core elements with more potency and variety. Silence of the Lambs is undoubtedly within the thriller genre and moreover can be placed into several of its numerous subgenres. However, there are two thriller subgenres that Silence fits into like a perfectly tailored suit of human skin: crime thriller and psychological thriller.
Some would say watching horror movies and being scared out of your wits is a fun way to spend their hard earned money. They go see these movies on average once a week, each time choosing a newer version of a trilogy like “Chucky” or “The evil Dead”. Film making has come a long way over the last few decades, the graphic...
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...
This essay will explore how horror films reflect the fears of both individuals and societies focusing on the film Cloverfield (Cloverfield, 2008). Films can often serve as an astute reflection of reality in a varying number of ways depending on the genre. The horror film can often serve as an analogy for the horrors of the real world. In the case of Cloverfield Director Matt Reeves creates a solid allegory of the September 11th terror attacks on New York City. “The horror film can bring us uncomfortably close to the worst that could ever happen—to a character or to ourselves” (Kawin, 2012).
The logic behind heaping plaudits on the upscale slashers and highbrow horror pictures lies, as with foreign horror, with the concept of aesthetic distance. Film analyst Ken Hanke theorizes that many critics simply praise so-called highbrow horror films because the acclaim comes from "people with little or no knowledge of the genre...What seemed so fresh and creative to them was largely a reshuffling of a very old bag of tricks."
SCREAM starts out in the quiet country region of Woodsboro, California. The silence is soon broken by the ringing of a phone coming from the inside of Casey Becker's home. The conversation between Casey and the threatening Voice, eventually leads up to having Casey scared out of her wits and being gutted. Sidney Prescott learns about the murder, and also finds out it was almost as bad as the murder of her mother (Maureen Prescott), which occurred almost a year ago. Randy Meeks, Reporter Gail Weathers, and Deputy Dewey Riley all get mixed up in the story with Sidney. If you want to learn anything else about the movie, go WATCH IT!!!!
The great director clouded his intent and motives by reportedly stating that the entire film was nothing more than one huge joke. No one laughed. Instead they cringed in their seats, waiting for the next assault on their senses. The violence and bloodletting of PSYCHO may look tame to those who have grown up on Jason and Freddy Krueger, but no one had ever seen anything like it in 1960.
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.
The Scary Movie trilogy is a spoof of scary and not so scary films. The first of the three movies to date was released in 2000. The movie was based on the scary movies that were released at that time. These movies included: Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Sixth Sense, and The Blair Witch Project. As the movies progressed they seemed to add parodies of not so scary movies such as Charlie's Angels and Mission Impossible II. Even though these movies did not seem to fit into the title, they were still creatively incorporated into the second movie. Then, there is the highly anticipated third movie with spoofs of all the movies that have made it big recently. So, of course this seemed to be the best of the three featuring The Ring, 8 Mile, Signs, The Matrix, and even an "appearance" by the king of pop, Michael Jackson.
At a time when the stalker movie had been exploited to all ends and the image of mute, staggering, vicious killers had been etched into society’s consciousness to the point of exhaustion, a new kid entered the block. The year was 1984 and it was time for a new villain to enter into the horror genre. A villain that was agile, intelligent, almost inviolable yet viscous, and by all means deadly. A Nightmare on Elm Street introduced the distinctive presence of Fred Krueger to the horror industry and to the audience. Freddy Krueger took the center stage and with him a new era of horror films began. This horribly scarred man who wore a ragged slouch hat, dirty red-and-green striped sweater, and a glove outfitted with knives at the fingers reinvented the stalker genre like no other film had. Fred Krueger breathed new life into the dying horror genre of the early 1980’s.
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
People are addicted to the synthetic feeling of being terrified. Modern day horror films are very different from the first horror films which date back to the late nineteenth century, but the goal of shocking the audience is still the same. Over the course of its existence, the horror industry has had to innovate new ways to keep its viewers on the edge of their seats. Horror films are frightening films created solely to ignite anxiety and panic within the viewers. Dread and alarm summon deep fears by captivating the audience with a shocking, terrifying, and unpredictable finale that leaves the viewer stunned.
Would you rather be horrified beyond repair or thrilled to the point of no return? In horror, the main purpose is to invoke fear and dread into the audience in the most unrealistic way. Horror movies involve supernatural entities such as ghosts, vampires, teleportation, and being completely immortal. As thriller films are grounded in realism and involve more suspense, mystery, and a sense of panic. Though both genres will frighten the audience, it will happen in two different ways. Whether the horror thrills or the thriller horrifies, a scare is always incorporated.