We’ve come a long way since seeing a man dressed as a monster eating people and kidnapping dames in the middle of the night, horrors movies have definitely evolved and adapted to the present days; this doesn’t mean that we don’t get to see this type of gimmick from time to time, but our fears have changed over the decades.
From giants like Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff who had become pop culture icons on the horror by portraying Dracula and Frankenstein, two of the most redesigned and remade monsters in horror films history, with a story that we all well know. Brought to the big screen in 1931, terrorising viewers for years after, relying on amazing memorable makeup, making you feel that those creatures really existed.
We travel fast forward into the 80s where horror takes a step further, giving the so-called slasher films, more attention; to the point where a fusion is born, between monsters and killers, therefore more graphic violence placed in common scenarios such as teenagers alone in the woods or a college party. This hybrid is responsible for such gruesome characters like, Jason Vorhees an unstoppable killer from Friday 13th, Freddy Kruger a vicious maniac that will hunt your dreams in Nightmare on Elm Street, or even a toy coming back to life with a soul of a killer named Chucky in Child’s Play.
Taking a small break from grotesque images of lunatics opening your guts, we enter a field full of ghosts, possessions, cursed objects and disturbing cults, something not entirely new but reexplored during the 2000s. At the same time where objects were flying on their own, CGI was gaining more and more power over the genre, pushing aside the beloved practical effects, which to be fair, sometimes the end result was embarrassing, but never the less, it gave the film more visual impact and personality.
Horror films, like every genre, keeps changing the game, adapting to society’s fears and trending issues, there will be always a place for a basic monster eating and butchering gorgeous girls, but it has reached a point where the scariest thing now, are ourselves, the things people would do for their beliefs, points of view or just fun, men killing men is been part of our nature since the beginning of life, but is the phycology behind it, in films like Midsommar, Get Out, The Lighthouse and Saint Maud that sends shivers down our spines, making us wish we were in a room full of ghosts instead.
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