What Makes Horror Movies Scary

WHAT MAKES HORROR MOVIES SCARY
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What Makes Horror Movies Scary
For the sake of creating horror, horror movie directors and writers devote much time into figuring out new elements that could enhance the quality of their work to bring excitement and frightfulness. “Horror lovers” would perhaps feel disappointed while the horror is not scary enough to make to their expectations. As we come along with the conclusion of why people enjoy horror, I would like to explore what makes one horror is scarier than another in terms of techniques and themes in order to attract the audience. For such a long history of horror, either horror movie or story have greatly developed into new stages that are different from the earliest one in history. Many techniques that had not been invented in the past have huge impacts on forming the modern form of horror. In this essay, those techniques would be explored from different media and scholar studies.
To examine what certain elements create better horror movies, it is essential for us to know what is the good horror and how do we define a good horror. According to the dictionary, Merriam-Webster, since 1828, the definition of horror represents painful and intense fear, dread or dismay; intense aversion or repugnance. Thus, the horror must create intense fear, so that it could make the audience feel extremely uncomfortable. Without the fear or the intensity, we could not say horror is qualified or it is good horror. In my word, I would define a good horror to be a media that would not only bring the audience an intense sense of fear but also leave the horror impression to the audience. This is achieved by using relevance whereby the directors make the audience relate to the subject, place, event or theme of the movie.[Merriam Webster Online Dictionary. n.d. Horror. Accessed April 19, 2019. -webster.com/dictionary/horror]
The directors try to trick the brains of the audience into relating to the setting and or a scene. Movie directors ten to meticulously create relatable experiences to the audience by tapping into the natural fears. Horror artists typically want to target the greatest possible audience and that means targeting the most common fears. By tapping into the phobias most people have, the directors trick the brain of the viewers to relate to being in a similar environment with elements that trigger fight or flight response. The directors also use poor lighting or darkness which heightens the human primal fear of darkness. Human brains have evolved to fear darkness since we have poor visibility in the dark and historically such factors limited survival chances1. When an individual is in a dark place, he/she cannot visually understand his/her environment and that triggers fear. Horror movies are scarier if you watch them in a dark theatre or in the night because the brain is able to relate to the lack of lighting and the uncertainty that comes with it. Their brains can relate to being in a dark environment and the uncertainties that come with such an environment coupled with the possibility of a danger lurking in the dark makes the audience share in the feeling of an actor in a dark environment or with poor lighting. The goal of the director is to ...