Look behind you: a quick history of horror cinema

Karolina Wisniewski
Contributor
As Halloween fades into a dim memory of theme parties and skanky costumes, let’s take a moment to examine the real reason for the season and look at the development of the horror film.
As much as I’d love to turn this article into a social commentary on the shameless and self-serving sexism of Halloween costumes (thank you, Mean Girls), with a history longer and more twisted than the Friday the 13th franchise, the genesis of cinematic horror is as informative as it is entertaining.
Several gothic novels transformed into films in the early 20th century, but the most memorable of these was Nosferatu (1922), a German adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Hollywood got its hands on some gothic classics like Frankenstein and Dracula in the early 1930s, but by the end of the next decade, the horror movie genre was stagnant; there wasn’t much to be done with the tired storylines of monsters and vampires – thank goodness Stephenie Meyer’s brilliant writing revitalized that one.
Enter Alfred Hitchcock. Although his filmography as a Hollywood director stretches as far back as the 1920s, it wasn’t until 1960’s Psycho that Hitchcock truly revolutionized cinematic history.
No longer was the villain supernatural; with the creation of character Norman Bates, Hitchcock brought horror films to a much more relatable – and, consequently, a much more terrifying – place. Attention must be paid to the iconic shower scene, complete with high-pitched string glissandos and Marion Crane’s bloodcurdling screams.
Psycho may have been the grandfather of slasher films, a genre of horror that features a weapon- wielding psychopath in relentless pursuit of a string of innocent victims; but shortly thereafter emerged one of the most iconic splatter films, horror movies that abound in gore: Night of the Living Dead.
By cementing the plot in blood, guts and graphic violence, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, though perhaps less aesthetically revolutionary than Psycho, gave birth to a long line of zombie films and pushed gore to the forefront of the film industry.
In the 1970s, a supernatural emphasis reemerged in horror films, and this time the most common incarnation was demonic possession. The most enduring of these is none other than 1973’s The Exorcist.
Born of films like 1956’s The Bad Seed and inspiring a slew of 1970s films like The Omen, The Exorcist succeeds at being so thoroughly disturbing because it juxtaposes childhood innocence with the evil of satanic possession; the sacrilegious imagery didn’t hurt, either.
Dissenters deride The Exorcist as laughable and consider it aesthetically inferior to its predecessors. While discussion of its value remains open, it inarguably elicited a strong reaction – whether this reaction was admiration or abhorrence is of less importance.
Whether for its absurdity, its perversion or its terror, nearly 30 years after its inception, the “spider walk” scene remains one of, if not the, most enduring scenes in all of horror film history.
The end of the 1970s truly belonged to the slasher film, which would see its heyday in years to come. John Carpenter stepped into the nightmares of babysitters everywhere when he directed the first of the Halloween films in 1978. The films’ central character is the masked Michael Myers, who most commonly preys on young females but will gladly gut just about anyone.
Much has been made of the connection between violence and sex in these films, as well as the moralizing undercurrent. Either way, the slasher film of the ’70s and ’80s in- troduced a new theme: the notion that one installment does not make a horror classic.
A slew of painfully bad sequels appeared, each more ridiculous than the last. Miraculously, Mike Myers managed to survive gunshots, drowning, free falling and decapitation; the writers of the Friday the 13th franchise eventually stopped explaining the resurrections of their slaughterer, Jason, altogether.
The mercilessly poor quality of horror continued into the 1990s, with nary an original thought in sight until 1996, when the brilliance of Scream appeared. Unlike demonic possession films that commented on a dystopian reality, or the purportedly moralizing slasher films, Scream indulged in its own ludicrousness and depravity. The generation of filmgoers in the ’90s didn’t want any preaching, and didn’t need to believe in anything – they just wanted to be entertained.
An entirely postmodern creation, Scream delivered this entertainment in the form of ironic commentary. Its reflexivity and self-awareness rendered Scream a parody of itself, which makes the Scary Movie spoofs a parody of a parody.
Arguably, since Scream, the horror film industry has fallen into disrepute. Although successfully terrifying and disturbing, recent horror films have consisted almost entirely of remakes, either of international cinema in The Ring and The Grudge; or of earlier Hollywood features like The House on Haunted Hill and The Amityville Horror.
The Saw franchise stands out as the exception, presenting an interesting crossover of the slasher- splatter subgenres. Saw, however, possesses none of the complexity or sophistication of its forerunners.
Some films have turned away from special effects and have instead put to use low-budget film-making techniques that depend on a buildup of psychological suspense, such as The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.
From a historical perspective, current films owe much to ancestors like Nosferatu. James Joyce may have inadvertently hit the nail on the head when he wrote “history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”