Horror genre research

Christian Metz’s developed a model of genre development in 1974. He suggested genres pass through four main phases of existance. These phases transition creating a stream of movies correlating in genre but whose aim slightly differs. These phases are experimental, classic, parody and deconstruction.

The experimental phase consists of mainly early films, which explored and experimented narratives to create the horror film, they lacked guidance and was rather a trial and error stage which formed. Therefore they looked to find guidance in other forms Nosferatu, in particular, tailed the German expression movement which used the main awareness of contrast especially with darker colour and therefore shadows where used as a prominent feature in these film. Definitive examples of these are 'The Golem'(1915/1920), ‘The cabinet of Dr Caligari’ (1919) and ‘Nosferatu’ (1922) all of whom formalised the narrative convection of the horror film in the earliest phase.

The next phase sees the existence of the classic films which helped establish the narrative conventions of the horror genre in films of such are the most successful and are the defining era of such ideas. Standard examples of these are Hollywood’s ‘Frankenstein’ (1931) and ‘Dracula’ (1931) made by universal- such films are widely recognises as classics. These eminent films pinpointed the original ideas and conventions that many films now follow gives them a trade and defining role in the horror genre today.

Parody films, stated by Metz’s model, soon follow with a primary objective to mimic the horror genre in a comical fashion.  These parodist films create a wider spectrum of audiences as well as create an unconventional twist. Prime example of these are films such as ‘Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein’ (1931), ‘Carry on screaming’ (1969) and ‘Scary movie’ (1999).

Next to follow sees then the rise of deconstruction films, these take the generic elements and styles of the conventional ‘classic’ horror genre and integrate them into varying sub genres. Such examples of these are films like ‘Se7en’ (1995), ‘The blair witch project’ (1998), ‘The sixth sense’ (1999) and ‘Scream’ (1996).