The horror genre has been around since the very beginning of filmmaking. As you can imagine, the major plots are getting a bit worn out after ninety-plus years of usage. If you see enough horror movies, you can begin foresee the next scene. It becomes a repetitive sequence of recycled scare tactics. This is especially common in visual horror movies, whereas psychological thrillers still possess some interesting plots, especially the ones with the twist endings. People love to be scared because it gives them a thrill that everyday life lacks. You can watch these movies and be totally enraptured by the monsters, devils, and zombies for 2 hours, emerging from the theater covered in bits of greasy yellow popcorn but completely unharmed.
Movies like Saw and the Halloween series were good for maybe the first one or two, but do we really need twelve of each? Movies like these can be pumped out a million times a year and still get an audience, which shows our society’s unending interest in this genre. Unfortunately, good psychological thrillers take a little more thought to create, and are thus, are few and far between. In my opinion Alfred Hitchcock will forever be the king of psychological thrillers. He is by far my favorite filmmaker of all times. Dial “M” for Murder, Rear Window, and of course Psycho, are all phenomenal examples of the perfect way to create suspense. A modern director that I think did a great job (up until The Last Airbender, haha) at creating interesting and thought provoking suspense movies, is M. Night Shyamalan. You could be scared all the through a movie and have the protagonist turn out to not actually be scary at all, or vise versa. Although I really do enjoy a good cheap scare every now and then, if I had to choose between the two I would go with the more thought provoking, psych thriller option. A new sub genre than I came across in this past year made me realize, do I really have to choose? I’ll use these movies as examples, but please don’t judge me. I don’t think that they are the pinnacle of perfection, but I do like the idea. The first one I saw was a Spanish filmed called “REC”, like the record button on a video camera. If I had to total up the “scary action” in the film, it might total ten or fifteen minutes, but the movie was done so well that the whole audience was on the edge of their seats for the entirety of the film. You did not even see the protagonist, or have any idea of what it might be until the last 20 minutes of the movie. You might think that this sounds like a gyp, but I know that I came out the theater totally satisfied. There is also a REC 2, but I didn’t think it was as scary because you already knew what you were going to see. The other film that I thought pulled this tactic off nicely, was Paranormal Activity. Even though I don’t think that this film executed its “scares” as well as they did in REC , I did admire the director for the amount of time in the movie during which absolutely nothing took place, while still keeping the rapt attention of the viewer. Both of these movies were filmed in the Blair Witch style, where either the lead character is filming, or the film is taken from a security tape.
I really admire the way that both of these films do not give you much to go on throughout the viewing, keep you holding your breath, and then wait until very near the ending to reveal what is really happening. So for me, this style of film nicely solves the question of Visual vs. Psychological Horror.
Concept: Visual vs. Psych Thriller
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