Making Use of Horror Conventions (Analysis of Modern and Historical Cinema)

Stephen Prince -The Horror Film

Stephen Prince writes that ''Like other genre movies, any given horror film will convey synchronic association, ideological and social messages that are part of a certain period or historical moment.''

This is very true and I have based my choice of theme and antagonist on this. Our time period is defined by the internet- wide and easy access to information of all kinds immediately. This makes the creation and propagation of urban legends incredibly easy- people will believe or at least willingly suspend disbelief with regards to things told to them by friends or friends of friends. Urban Legends are a staple of horror in the 21st century thus far, and the interactivity and ease of creation by anyone with an internet connection make them personal to those who make and experience them. Because of this, outstanding ''creepypastas'' become memes, and popular memes become urban legends. The Slender Man made these transitions in the 3 years since the creepypasta originated, and now is a common name in horror and already very popular.





The Abandonment of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1968 was a turning point in cinema- the code, which had been in enforcement since 1930, was a set of rules and guidelines for the display of explicit content in films. The list covered censorship of obvious things like violent and sexual content as well as some interesting historical artifacts such as ''sex relationships between black and white races''. This sort of censorship placed on films shaped the history of horror films, and several distinct trends can be seen. The most obvious of these is the trend for overly gory B-horrors in the 1980s, as this was a time when technology in prosthetics had advanced, and the censorship preventing such graphic violence was disappearing. Examples are films like ''The Evil Dead'' and ''John Carpenter's The Thing''.



Since the removal of a lot of censorship resulted in an explosion of graphically violent horror movies, this became a mainstream trend. However, in horror, the most effective horror movies are ones that break trends because that in itself puts the viewer out of their comfort zone by giving them something they don't expect. This has led to a bizarre reversal of trends in horror- the strict censorship resulted in subtle horrors relying on atmosphere and suspense (e.g. ''Psycho''), and then the removal of such censorship led to shock horrors and exploitation movies, and now in an effort to be different and fresh there are more subtle and atmospheric horrors again (''Sinister'', ''Dark Skies''). My movie, The Slender Man, attempts to be a part of this most recent trend while it is still in the height of its popularity. I have attempted to use the convergence of online media propagation, fluctuating theme trends, and a postmodern focus on urban legends to create a horror with the maximum possible audience and collective interest.