1. Horror is a genre that aims to create a sense of fear, panic, alarm, and dread for the audience. These films are often unsettling and rely on scaring the audience through a portrayal of their worst fears and nightmares. Traditionally, Horror films incorporate a large amount of violence and gore into the plot. Horrors are used to subconsciously highlight anxieties and concerns of the contemporary culture.
2. Like I said the study of horror monsters can give insights into the anxieties and concerns of the contemporary culture. Of course, not all people have the same worries at any given time, but it is possible to identify general cultural and contextual trends through the monsters created for horror texts.
3. Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922) created in Germany shortly after WW1. The vampire is an ‘invader’; he comes from ‘elsewhere’ and brings a disease over the local community. His method of attack involves penetration and the exchange of bodily fluids. This can be read as a sexual metaphor however usually the outcome of a vampire attack is death or infection. Poverty and disease was rife and in 1918 in Germany where hundreds of thousands of people died during a flu pandemic.
4. Due to the amount of access we have to technology and media, as a culture, we are becoming desensitized. For an example, if you were in room where everyone is constantly arguing and shouting, overtime you will become less sensitive to the environment. The monsters of Eden Lake (Watkins, 2008); and the monsters in Funny Games (Haneke, 2008) and The Strangers (Bertino , 2008) are disconcertingly emotionally removed. These monsters appear to be the culmination of a desensitised culture which has chosen to seek entertainment through the terrorisation of others. In other words the monsters are looking for a stimulus and a physical reaction but no emotional reaction. Unlike those of previous eras, these monsters are not invaders or creations of science or poor parenting; they are selfish, nihilistic creations of the culture itself.
5. The genre has the ability to adapt to allow it to tap into each generation’s ideologies and concerns and its metaphorical approach can be used to deal with ideas and issues that appeal to a range of audience groups. Other genres such as Westerns may not be able to speak to modern audiences in the way they used to but horror continues to provide a cultural catharsis over 100 years. For example the recent Purge (DeMonaco, 2013) film gives audience an over emphasised way of dealing with crime rates in nation
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