What makes a really good horror movie?

The most frightning thing for me is something that could actually happen, something that we the viewer have experienced or know could easily happen to us. Familiarity makes us feel safe, but that could not be further from the true in a horror movie, so in turn you end up being more scared as you were lulled into a false sense of security. That said, the reality part of a horror movie is only one small part of it. I also like it when a movie stays true to the legend. For example, a vampire movie only has vampire that can be killed in the traditional ways. I watched on vampire movie and they could go out in full sunlight and victims that they bite didn't ...  Read the complete review

Note: Written by me for the October 31st, 2008 issue of my University newspaper: The Rabbit (University of Essex) ~~~ All Hallow's Eve is upon us, marking a deluge of horror films flooding our cinemas, from abstract, hell-sent horror, such as Clive Barker's Midnight Meat Train, to mind-bending gore-fests such as Saw V. The horror film is a long-standing cinematic institution, dating back as far as Georges Méliès' work of the 1890s (namely House of the Devil), yet only truly solidifying its status as a mainstay of cinema in the 1920s with the German Expressionism movement, fronted by Robert Wiene (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and F.W. ...  Read the complete review

So what does make a good horror movie? Well one person's opinion on the subject will probably differ from another. But there are a few ingredients that I think are essential. - A PLAY ON HUMAN FEARS If an audience can identify with something on screen that plays on their own fears then you've got half the job done. Almost everyone will have something in common that they fear. Of course the usual things could be spiders and creepy crawlies, so movies about giant spiders may make the skin crawl. But for me the best use in recent memory of a premise that plays on human emotion is Neil Marshall's The Descent. It combines the fear of the dark, being ...  Read the complete review

Ahh yes the horror genre. We either love it, or hate it. I personally love the horror genre and have seen my fair share of good horror movies and bad horror movies. I suppose the question I should be asking myself is why do I like them so much? Is it that I like to see people being ripped open and gutted? Do I like seeing people running for their lives? Do I like the jumps and chills? I don't know, but whatever it is makes me excited whenever I hear of a new horror film coming out. I decided to do a little research on the horror genre, just out of interest really and I found out that the very first movie that showed supernatural events was Georges ...  Read the complete review

The classic image many might have of a horror film would be the Hammer House type - chilling music to the sight of Christopher Lee draining the blood from his newest helpless victim, but thesedays there seems to be a whole range of sub-genres for Horror. Most popularly: Teen Horrors are generally gorefests, with either: a downtrodden/grudgebearing student/town recluse going around hacking annoying but pretty young teens to death (I'm fairly sure I know what you did last summer but i'll still need 3 films to work it out), or occasionally a weird creature (Jeepers Creepers) with an insatiable thirst. Other films thesedays are often either extremely ...  Read the complete review