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The evolution of horror movies
The evolution of horror movies
The evolution of horror movies
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The Blair Witch Project
As writers and producers saw the amazing popularity and success of the movie Scream many other copy cat versions were made. Movies such as I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend all followed the same teen slasher format. Nothing is being left up to the movie viewer’s imagination anymore. Everything for the past thirty years was spelled out and given to the viewer, leaving the identity of the killer as the only form of mystery. The genre of horror was losing a very important battle. The bone-chilling movies of the past were giving way to the comedic teen movies of the present.
With the movie viewing public practically begging for a new type of horror movie, two young filmmakers decided to take an approach no one had used for decades. Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick came up with an idea for a new style of horror film. These two gentlemen were independent filmmakers so their budget was fairly limited. From the small amount of funds and creative genius of the two filmmakers, the idea of The Blair Witch Project was born.
The story takes place in the small town of Burketsville, Maryland. An actual city of less than two hundred people. Before the spring of 1998 it was known for the pivotal civil war battle that happened there over one hundred years ago. Then a summer blockbuster about three college students who set off to this small town to film a documentary about a local witch turned the town upside down. An interesting approach...
The play takes place in Hillsboro. It is a small fictional town that is meant to resemble Dayton, Tennessee, where the Scopes trial was held in 1925.
The story takes place in Annadel, a rural town seated in Justice County of southwestern West Virginia, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The author does a fantastic job bringing the reader to the setting through the story being depicted by four different characters’ self narrated stories, which effectively puts the reader in the character’s shoes. In addition, a unique trait is added, with the dialogue being written in a presumably region and period specific style southern dialect. This feature not only makes the reader feel as though they are there at that time and place, but also provides for a more interesting read. While the unique style added to the dia...
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 the Town of Salem Massachusetts, 1692, a group of adolescents are caught dancing in the forest. Among the adolescents in The Crucible, Abigail Williams and Mary Warren. The girls are horrified that they have been caught dancing, a sinful act, therefore they devise a story to evade punishment: they claim to have been bewitched. The first person who they accuse of witchcraft is a the black maid, Tituba. This results in her jail sentence as well as fearful suspicion throughout the town. Arthur Miller demonstrates the impact of lying as the girls recognise and manipulate their power in the town. Lead by Abigail, they go further, claiming countless others guilty and dooming them to exile. Miller demonstrates that there power is so great that even when Mary attempts to stand against her friends, she is quickly overwhelmed and once again plays along with their trickery. As the girls’ conspiracy continues, controversy arise over their truthfulness; people choose sides often lying themselves to support their side, further altering the lives of all involved.
A predominantly black town in Florida by the name of Rosewood was abandoned in 1923 due to the city being left in devastating ruins after a horrendous bloodshed massacre. The massacre was initiated by accusations of a black man by the name of Jesse Hunter assaulting a white female by the name of Fanny Taylor. But their troubles didn’t begin there this was long awaiting battle due to prior false information that often ended with a black person being lynched.The incident regarding Jesse Hunter and Fanny Taylor set havoc to the little town of Rosewood.In spite of the rumors that the two were romantically involved or that at least the woman was using the incident to cover up her premarital affairs. Meanwhile, members of the Ku Klux Klan rallied in nearby towns and gathered people to go and rise terror on Rosewood. The one person who knew the truth was a man named Sam Cartier. Who was lynched by the Ku Klux Klan as a warning to whoever was helping Jesse. It was soon rumored that Jesse’s friend Aaron’s cousin Sylvester was hiding him at his house. The KKK demanded
story takes place in Salem in 1692, during the Salem witch trials. The story starts
Hysteria took over the town and caused them to believe that their neighbors were practicing witchcraft. If there was a wind storm and a fence was knocked down, people believed that their neighbors used witchcraft to do it. Everyone from ordinary people to the governor’s wife was accused of witchcraft. Even a pregnant woman and the most perfect puritan woman were accused. No one in the small town was safe.
The crucible’s setting was in the year 1962, in the small Puritan society of Salem. One night some of the girls in the village were in the woods doing love potions when they were caught. The girls lied and said that witches made them do it. In an extremely religeous society the influence of witches was immensely frightening and as the thought to identify witches arose, so did mass hysteria of the...
The play is based on the real life witch hunts that occurred in the late
you see her sit up in the bath with a start, like one would if they
The setting for this film and the particular scene is vital to bringing the story into focus. The story is of a black man who is fighting for his own life and not going to prison for the killing of two white men who had raped his 10 year old daughter. The director Joel Schumacher and the author John Grisham revisit the small town of Canton Mississippi in order to shoot this film. This element brings a reality and a visual to the audience of where the actual events took place. This builds the drama in the story. The courtroom scenes are shot at the actual courthouse in Canton (Arrington 1996). Originally the filming location chosen was to be in Oxford. Fortunately the filming was to take place during football season and all the hotels were full. Another setback was the courthouse lawn in Oxford was too small, therefore the traffic would also have to be rerouted for up to 15 days and this posed a problem as well. The Canton location was a better choice for originality of the story (Arrington 1996).
A group of teenage girls were secretly dancing in the woods with a black slave, named Tituba. When they were discovered of what they were doing, the girls started accusing certain individuals in the village of dealing with witchcraft. Within a blink of an eye, the entire village is controlled by a devil that exists within the fear of each person. A drama of suspense and impact, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, explores through the individuals' vengeance, fear, reputation, and quest for power.
The Shining is about a white middle class dysfunctional family that suffers from natural and supernatural stresses in an isolated Rocky mountain hotel. .The father, a former teacher turned writer, is portrayed as a habitual drinker, wife- and child-abuser, with a kind of evil streak The mother is shown as a battered woman. The film suggests that due to the abuse at the hands of his father and the passivity of his mother, the child of this family developed psychological problems. He had imaginary friends and began to see frightening images.
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 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.