FEAR FACTOR
THE FEELING OF FEAR: One might feel that fear or panic is the negative emotion and it is bound to make one weak outside as well as inside. Fear has different levels. You might feel panic or fear when experiences a strike of lightening in the sky accompanied by sound of thunder or someone pointing a gun towards you. Sometimes even a dog barking madly can create fear in someone’s mind. You hear a ghost story from someone and have a sleepless night fearing that someone is haunting you. At various levels fear increases your heartbeats and blood pressure to a certain limit. However it has been scientifically proved that fear or panic also gives you a strange but very strong excitement. Some people are so addicted to such kind of excitements that they engage themselves in dangerous acts deliberately in order to experience the pleasure derived from fear such as sky diving, mountaineering etc. Psychologically and medically it is very logical that fear is bound to create pleasure and as the extent of fear or panic grows, so grows the joy. Sometimes that joy increases more as one realizes that the fear he is experiencing is harmless. For example, riding on a rollercoaster or watching a horror movie. They are such kind of sources through which one derives enjoyment through the feeling of panic.
FEAR FACTOR IN CINEMA WORLD: The cinema world grasped this source of creating excitement very well and since then horror has become one of the most popular genres in cinema world. Earlier when people used to hear stories about ghosts or haunted house, they felt a sense of horror but not as much as they could now enjoy by being a part of it in horror movies. So the cinema captured this psychology of people and provided them with visuals that they could relate to their imaginations and derive pleasure through their inner fear.
EARLIER CONCEPT: When we see horror movies in the early age of cinema, we mostly see stories about ghosts, vampires, haunted house etc which were traditionally told by grandparents to their children. Initially such kinds of horror stories were very popular among the people and so cinema focused on those themes. We see the vampires like Dracula (1931) or Nosferatu (1922) waking up at night from their coffins and drinking people’s blood. We see dead people coming alive such as Frankenstein (1931) or zombies on the streets creating havoc in movies like Night of the Living Dead (1968 ). We also saw spirits roaming in haunted house holding a candle like in the movie Mahal (1949). These kinds of movies showed ghosts and vampires and other scary images to create fear in audiences.
CORRUPTED INNOCENCE: However later as cinema world grew up, it came with a new psychology that was later used on a large scale in horror movies, and which changed the face of horror cinema forever. Watching ghosts, haunted houses and vampires, people got bored enough. They needed some new form of horror now. It was then realized why people aren’t scared of such ghost movies anymore. According to human psychology, something that is expected doesn’t create any chaos. A ghost is supposed to scare people, a vampire is supposed to drink blood, zombie is supposed to eat people’s flesh. This is rather their nature. And this is what they exist to do. But then cinema brought something in view that was not expected. In the year 1973 a movie released which changed horror cinema concept forever in people’s mind. And it gave so many people’s sleepless nights for long time - The exorcist. What was so different about this movie and what categorized it from the regular horror cinema was that a little innocent girl was shown to have been possessed by a spirit. A girl who looked very innocent and completely harmless in first half of the movie changed into a vigorous spirit in the second half. This unexpected kind of horror scared people out of their wits. As we all know that movie still marks as a milestone in the world of horror cinema. This was not only first of its kind but it started a series of horror cinema having the same kind of theme. Later in 1976, Omen was released. This movie also dealt with a child who was born when stars were in wrong direction. He possessed Satan inside him. It was obvious that no one will expect an infant to scare people and create panic in their minds. But these kinds of movies soon became everyone’s favorite and those little innocent characters soon became so popular that people loved them to hate. In 1988 another example of corrupted innocence in horror movies came as the movie Child’s Play in which a vicious murderer, before dying transfers his spirit into a plastic doll. Later that plastic doll comes alive and starts killing people.
PSYCHOLOGICAL FEAR AND GORE: When all these movies were becoming popular, simultaneously other categories of horror cinema were emerging. Earlier in 1968 when Rosemary’s Baby and in 1980, The Shining was released people for the first time experienced part horror part psychological thriller movies. It is considered to be a landmark in the genre of psychological horror. Also in 1978, horror cinema rose up from traditional methods of horror like ghosts, spirits and vampires etc and shifted to a new genre of horror, with the movie Halloween. In that movie a masked man who is psychologically unstable murders people in a town. That was the first of its kind horror cinema where a living man created horror wearing a mask and holding a butcher’s knife in his hand and became popular as the Boogieman. This category of horror cinema was known as Slasher films. More came in this genre like Susperia (1977), Madman (1981), The Last house on the Left (1972) etc. Another example of environmental horror was the movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) where group of a few people accidently landed in the family of cannibals. The decade of 70s was when people shifted their preferences from traditional horror and rather started to enjoy the creepy environment or bloodshed.
Another category of horror mixed with some adventurous mission was coming to existence. Movies like Jaws (1975) can be put into that. It was the fear rather created by beasts or animals rather than humans or ghosts. People were always curious about the life in the outer space. Answering to their curiosity cinema world brought horror movies like Alien (1979), The Thing (1982). Earlier in black and white cinema also, space movies were made but by the time cinema reached in 80s the special effects grew so much that looked almost real and easily provoked people’s fear and panic. By the time horror cinema reached in its 90s, Asian cinema had already captured all the categories of horror cinema in international cine world. Countries like Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Korea etc didn’t only make off-beat horror movies with very perfection but also inspired Hollywood to follow their steps. But Hollywood cinema could never catch the creepiness and extent of fear-triggering factor in Asian cinema with exact brilliance. By this time part horror, part psychological themes had almost taken over in horror genre like the movies Audition (1999). The graphic torture in Japanese cinema was a unique feature that was copied in most of the Hollywood movies like Saw (2004), Wrong Turn (2003), and Hostel (2005). In fact famous Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino, in his movie Kill Bill (2003) actually paid homage to the typical blood, gore and graphic violence style of Japanese cinema. With movies like Ringu (1998 ), One Missed Call (2003) and Ju-On: The Grudge (2003) Japanese cinema redefined the old concepts of spirits and haunted house with a new freshness. With psychological thrillers such as A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), The Eye (2002) and Thirst (2009) Asian cinema not only reached to new heights but also inspired Hollywood to remake these masterpieces in west.
Even Hollywood did certain experiments on its own to create new and off-beat horror. Since the slapstick horror series Evil Dead (started in 1981), Hollywood was clear enough to develop the concept of horror comedies and it came out later with some incredible parodies like Shaun of the Dead (2004), Santa’s Slay (2005), Zombieland (2009) and of course not to mention the Scary Movie Series (from 2000 to 2006).
Ever since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was made, people appreciated the documentary style movies. Movies that didn’t have any background music or instead of story narration they moved like a documentary tape. Shaking cameras, interviews with people and unexpected moves like some reality show added to the horror elements of the movies. In this genre not much movies are made but few could establish themselves successfully in people’s mind such as The Blair Witch Project (1999), Rec (2007), Noroi: The Curse (2005) etc.
It is seen that graphic violence and gore has been used in horror cinemas over a generation. However Asian cinema, particularly Japanese has defined it with such extremeness that it led to a new branch of horror named Torture Porno. This category consisted pure bloodshed, gore and graphical violence. Sometimes the movie didn’t even have a story. It just showed torture scenes and graphical violence here and there. Just like porn movies don’t have any particular stories but rather they excite the viewers sexually, these gory movies were successful in triggering the psychological excitement that human mind tends to derive from violence. However these kinds of movies had resulted in some extreme psychological effects on certain people’s minds. As a result censor board had to mark the clear limitation of showing graphical violence in movies. Asian directors like Takashi Miike and Park Chan Wook often came into controversies through their off-beat horror cinemas though.
In today’s world it has been proved that fear that was considered to be negative emotion once has now been accepted as a psychological phenomenon that can even help in generating excitement resulting in a strange but consistent pleasure. It is like a drug addiction. It has a strange but strong emergence of ecstasy inside the person’s mind. it can often generate as a phobia like heights, depths, darkness or loud noises or it can be in form of violence such as torture or bloodshed. It has been confined inside all of us in some corner of our and this horror genre of cinema has at least taught people one important thing – if you can’t run away from fear, better make the best out of it.