Genre Development (second draft)

Over the years the horror genre has developed from films such as ‘Psycho’ (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) to some of the most resent horror films such as ‘Halloween’ (Rob Zombie, 2007). If we compare these two films the most obvious difference are the killings in each film. In ‘Psycho’ during all the murders you never see the knife have direct contact with the victim only sound effects and splatters of blood, the film being in black and white also means that we never actually see the colour of the blood we just assume it is. This allows the film to spend less time on making up the stab wounds and the BBFC could drop is to a 15 so the target audience would be of a wider range. If we then compare the killing from ‘Psycho’ to the killing of the boys step farther in ‘Halloween’ it is a lot more visual, we see the boy cut the neck and the blood pour out of the cut as he slowly dies. We can see how over the years the brutality of killings in horror films has slowly gotten gorier. A horror film which I didn’t use in my analyses demonstrates the point I am making, the Saw films are all every gory to the point of not being able to watch, for example in ‘Saw 5’ (David Hackl, 2005) the final test they have to do is they have to put their arms into a power saw and fill the a bowl with their blood. During this scene you see all of what happens, the saw cutting their arms and the blood pouring into the bowl and when the bowl is full and they take their arms out you see the man’s arm cut in half from his hand to his elbow. ‘Psycho’ was the first slasher horror film ever and it couldn’t have as much blood and gore as ‘Saw’ for example because the audience weren’t familiar with this type of film, so ‘Psycho’ took the ideas and storyline of a slasher film but showed no over the top blood. Between the times ‘Psycho’ was made and ‘Halloween’ there has been a lot of other slasher films released such as ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ (1984) this film is a lot more gory and plays with your mind more. For example, at the end of the film when the boy gets pulled into his bed there is an excessive amount of blood used for one person and we as an audience relate our bed as a place of safety. Another film that shows gore but isn’t to over the top with the amount of blood is ‘Scream’ (1996) we see the killer kill his victims in this film like ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ but the blood level used in ‘Scream’ is more realistic which makes the film scarier. This shows us how slashers have changed over the years going from no blood and gore to over the top then back to more realistic. The realism in films attracts audience because when you go to see a film you will enjoy it more if you believe that it could happen. For example, the film ‘Mirrors’ (Alexander Aja, 2008) is a good film but the idea of monsters being inside mirrors doesn’t scare me, it may have a different affect on someone else but I don’t think its scary at all because it’s so unrealistic. If we compare this film to ‘Saw’ the storyline is a lot more believable and realistic and this makes the audience think that this could happen to anyone and this makes it scarier.

Even though the more resent horror film show a lot more gore and have more brutal killings in ‘American Psycho’ (2000) they use the same technique as in ‘Psycho’ even though the killings are more brutal the audience never sees the murder weapon make contact with the victim. When you finish watching the film you sort of understand why this techniques is used because the killer doesn’t actually kill anyone he just thinks he does because of the mental state he’s in. Even though we don’t see the weapon hitting/stabbing the victim’s because the film is in colour and we as an audience fill in the blanks the effect of the murder has a bigger impact then the murders in ‘Psycho’. Another thing that has become more popular in horror films is non-diegetic music to build up tension, if we look at ‘Psycho’ there isn’t that much non-diegetic music for tension building but in the more recent films like ‘Halloween’ and ‘Scream’ non-diegetic is used all the time for tension. A common occurrence that we see in all of the films i analysed is the time of day the murders are committed, all of them are done during night, apart from ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ (Tobe Hooper,1974). This is a very symbolic stimulus of a horror film because night time is always scarier and when there is non-diegetic music it builds up the climax and being a horror film the audience is expecting something to happen.

It is interesting looking at the people killed in slasher films, in ‘Psycho’ the first to be killed is the woman that stole the money from her boss but the detective is an innocent man and was just doing his job. If we now look at ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ all the children that he kills are all children of the parents that killed him this being his motive. In the film ‘Scream’ there is a part where they talk about how to survive a horror film, one of the things is ‘no sex’ and if we relate this to ‘Halloween’ he killed the couple on the sofa as the were about to have sex and killed his sister after she had sex and a few other people after they had sex. So in this film it seems that if you have sex you die as the boy says in ‘Scream’.

Looking at the music used in the films i have analysed i have found out that it has changed over time. In the classic film ‘Psycho’ and ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ the music sound more like its from a musical score. Then compared to some of the more recent films ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ and ‘Scream’ the music sounds more like rock music than a musical score. However, there are still the typical tension building, high pitched music. I think the music of films has changed over time because the music industry has changed and the audience can relate to the music.

In conclusion even though over the years technology has updated greatly depending on director, rating and type of horror slasher film will depend on the amount of gore shown. In my case because i don’t have a high budget i wont be able to do much blood and gore so the technique used in ‘Psycho’ may help me a lot. In every film the killings have always been in an isolated place for example, in ‘Scream’ the killer specifies that they are in the middle of know where and it would take ages for anyone to get there.