What scares us now? The evolution of horror films

This article takes a look at how horror film has evolved, from the silent era to present day including the big influences on the genre along the way. Let's get started!

Influence of literature on horror films

Before we jump into horror cinema and its evolution, it’s worth a quick word on how it was inspired by gothic novels and short stories. Here are a few of those big literature influences that are still encouraging new film adaptations.

• Mary Shelley with ‘Frankenstein’: Frankenstein has been adapted into tons of films, starting with the 1931 Universal classic.
• Bram Stoker with ‘Dracula’: Dracula has been the basis for many, many vampire films, including the 1931 version starring Bela Lugosi.
• Edgar Allan Poe with, well, everything… Poe’s work has inspired countless horror films and TV shows, induing The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Masque of the Red Death.

Horror cinema: The evolution

In the beginning

The horror genre’s roots go back to the late 19^th and early 20^th century, when a film director, actor, and magician(!) called George Méliès created Le Manoir du Diable, or The House of the Devil, in 1896. This is generally considered the first ever horror film, a silent ‘short’ featuring bats, ghosts, and a demonic, if slightly theatrical, figure.

German Expressionism

As cinema evolved, so did the scope and ambition of horror films. In the 1920s, German Expressionism, with a focus on visual storytelling, had a huge impact on the genre. German Expressionism in film tended to be contrast heavy (lots of shadows), with distorted, surreal sets. They covered themes like insanity and paranoia (psychological horror) as well as supernatural, grotesque and the bizarre! The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922) are two of the best-loved examples, the former is the story of a hypnotist using a sleep walker to commit murders, and the latter is of course, a take on the classic story of Dracula. The lighting and set design would be adopted by film-makers world wide, and they’re still widely used techniques in horror today.

Universal monsters and classic horror

The 1930s and ‘40s saw a rise of the (now) classic Universal Pictures monster films like Dracula and Frankenstein (both 1931), The Mummy (1932), and The Wolf Man (1941). These types of films quite often got their inspiration from classic literature and folklore, blending fantasy and horror while creating some memorable characters.

This era was all about special effects and makeup. Jack Pierce's work on Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein was ground-breaking stuff. He used cotton, spirit gum (used for hair-related sticking), and mortician’s wax and this became a template for later characters like The Mummy and The Wolf Man. The techniques that were used and developed during this period improved how long makeup could be worn comfortably, and without coming off or breaking up.

Post-war horror: The atomic age

After the Second World War, horror films started to reflect social anxieties. The Cold War introduced a near constant state of tension about nuclear war and the unknown consequences of scientific experimentation. These anxieties were often reflected in a blend between horror and sci-fi like The Thing from Another World (1951) and Village of the Damned (1960), both featuring themes of invasion and paranoia with a little splash of anti-communism and loss of individuality.

Psychological horror and the 60s

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) was a shift in the genre away from monsters and aliens, towards the psychological, a more intimate and disturbing type of horror! Films started to make use of unreliable narrators, and ended on an ambiguous or unsettling note. Aesthetically there was a lot of emphasis on stark contrast and tight framing, with abrupt silences in the soundtrack. Think of the famous shower scene in Psycho with the quick cuts and violin screeching.

Supernatural, the occult, and slasher movies

The 70s in horror were very much a time of depicting intense fear related to faith, evil, and science vs religion. One of the most notable films from this time was The Exorcist (1973) which follows the possession of a girl and subsequent exorcism attempts. A large part of its success was that it was grounded in a realistic context, so it became a more plausible fear. The shocking and graphic imagery in the film—the head-spinning scene, projectile vomiting, levitation—were ground-breaking.

Slashers were big too, and continued their popularity into the ‘80s. They usually involved a killer stalking and murdering a group of people, quite often teenagers, like Friday the 13^th (1980), and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). The hallmark of these movies was graphic violence and inventive ways for people to die. This sub-genre led to a lot of discussions around glorifying violence, the impact of violent films on an audience and society, and whether they were misogynistic.

Special effects

There were a lot of technological advancements in the 1980s and so special effects evolved and improved too. Makeup and prosthetics in films had come a long way, and prosthetics made from latex and other materials meant more gruesome and detailed effects. A great example of this is the (body) horror film The Fly (1986) where the main character gradually and horrifically transforms from man to fly.

Live footage was being combined with optical effects and compositing in a more believable way too, and in Poltergeist (1982) the ghosts and supernatural beings interact with the physical world in a very real way. Ghostbusters (1984) was a similar deal, though at the more tongue-in-cheek fun end of the scale.

Found footage

In the late 90s to early 00s we started to see a glut of films that were based around the idea of ‘found footage’. Popularised by The Blair Witch Project (1999), this is a low-budget hand-held style that has a documentary-like approach, in this case with filmmakers lost in the woods, filming their experience. All of the marketing around TBWP made the suggestion that the events had actually happened, which added to the hype. Although Blair Witch takes all the credit, it wasn’t the first found footage film of this type. There was a movie called The Last Broadcast released the year before that featured a documentary crew investigating a mysterious death, but it didn’t have much in the way of mainstream success.

With the growing accessibility of digital cameras and the internet, there was a sense of ‘realness’ and timeliness about this type of movie, and we soon saw a whole bunch of similar outputs, including My Little Eye (2002), and later had a resurgence with the likes of [Rec] (2007), Cloverfield (2008), and of course the Paranormal Activity series of films.

Comedy horror popped its head up at this time as well, with films like Shaun of the Dead (2004) becoming quick favourites in the genre—a mix of zombie apocalypse and our particular brand of British humour.

Elevated horror

The 2010s were a shift back towards psychological and what they call ‘elevated’ horror, which is a term used to describe films that blend traditional horror with a deeper thematic content, so to put it simply they’re going for storytelling and subtlety, as well as just scaring the pants off you. Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017) tackled racism and social justice through a horror lens, and was both critically acclaimed and also won a bunch of awards, including the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Hereditary (2018), and Midsommar, which is also a folk horror (2019), looked at themes of grief, family trauma, and cultural disintegration while managing to be really, really weird and terrifying. I may never recover from watching Hereditary. These films have more of a focus on character development rather than just being a gore-fest or full of jump scares (though they still have plenty of both) and rely on a slow building tension. Rather than the previous psychological-horror aesthetic of shadows and high contrast, the cinematography here is usually very stylised and highly symbolic, and usually of very high quality.

Technology and horror

Rapid advancements in tech have really influenced horror films in the 21st century. The rise of digital filmmaking and CGI has meant more sophisticated and realistic special effects. Not only that, horror now weaves modern technology into narratives, as with Unfriended (2014) and Host (2020) and their format of computer screens and video calls.

Global influences on horror film

Even though we’ve concentrated mostly on Hollywood for this article, there’s a really rich and diverse horror film culture around the world and many of these have had an influence on mainstream Hollywood horror. Here are just a handful:

Japanese horror

Japanese horror (J-Horror) is known for its focus on psychological terror, often rooted in traditional folklore. Films like Ringu (1998), and Ju-On: The Grudge (2002), introduced audiences to a more subtle, creeping dread. Both of them have had Hollywood remakes which have been popular in their own right. These types of films often revolve around cursed objects, angry spirits, and an interaction between the modern, and ancient superstitions.

South Korean horror

South Korean horror (K-Horror) tends to have a blend of intense emotion, social commentary, and visceral horror. A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) and The Wailing (2016) combine supernatural elements with psychological and societal issues, and Train to Busan (2016),is a zombie horror that critiques social status and human selfishness in a crisis.

Italian horror

Italy has a particularly well-loved sub-genre of horror called Giallo (yellow), which comes from paperback mystery novels with yellow covers that were very popular in the ‘60s and ‘70s. In these films there’s a lot of suspense, often with a crime being investigated; it blends thriller, mystery, and horror. Suspiria (1977), directed by Dario Argento, is famous for its vibrant use of colour (particularly red) and deliberately created an unrealistic setting with a nod to Disney’s Snow White colouring.

Mexican horror

Mexican horror often favours a blend of tradition with innovation. They explore death, the afterlife, and supernatural, all influenced by the country’s cultural attitude towards death. Directors like Guillermo del Toro have made Mexican horror globally successful with films like The Devil's Backbone (2001) and Pan's Labyrinth (2006).

Hindi horror

When we in the West think of Indian film, we tend to gravitate to the traditional colourful and melodramatic style of Bollywood (a portmanteau of Bombay and Hollywood), but Hindi horror is a distinct sub-genre of Hindi films. Bollywood horror is unusual in that it combines those big musical numbers that we’ve come to expect, with traditional horror like ghosts, curses, and other assorted spooky beings. Raat (1992) and Tumbbad (2018) are examples of these.

The evolution of horror films: More reading

Here are some great sites where you can check out more on horror films and other genres.

• British Film Institute (BFI)
• Smithsonian Magazine
• The Guardian: The History of Horror
• Criterion Collection
• Film School Rejects
• Bloody Disgusting
• Roger Ebert
• Vulture

Conclusion

From gore and body horror to scary monsters, creepy ghosts, and unsettling inner-reflections, there’s no denying horror is a broad genre, and there’s something for everyone. Except those who hate being scared. Horror films are steeped in cultural influences about our deep-rooted fears of death, concerns in society, to our discomfort about the creeping reliance on modern technology, and I’m sure the genre will keep finding new ways to terrify the bejeezus out of us...

… and have us sleeping with the light on…

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About this page

This page was written by Marie Gardiner. Marie is a writer, author, and photographer. It was edited by Andrew Blackman. Andrew is a freelance writer and editor, and is a copy editor for Envato Tuts+.