It’s that time of the year again – Halloween is here, and what better way to celebrate than to roll out a few of your favourite horror movies and set your hearts racing, your spine chilling and your bones tingling? Deciding what to watch, however, may be a point of consternation for you and your friends with the huge range of different horror movies out there. Do you go for the slightly dated original, or the overly gory remake? The unsettling psychological horror, or the blatantly ridiculous yet highly entertaining slasher? To help you make this important choice, I’m going to give you a basic guide to several of the most popular horror sub-genres, and stellar examples of each. Just make sure you watch them in the dark while your parents are out – what could possibly go wrong?
The Slasher
No list of movies for a Halloween marathon is complete without a good slasher. After all, the original slasher movie that reinvigorated the genre in the late 1970′s was John Carpenter’s film named after the holiday itself. 1978′s Halloween inspired many copycat films, the most famous of which are Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Each of these films introduces an iconic killer whose names remain infamous even today – Mike Myers, Jason Vorhees and Freddy Krueger. Each film also upped the ante on the last in terms of gore, violence, and highly imaginative death scenes that contributed to modern horror by inspiring franchises such as Final Destination and Saw. All three of these early slashes have received the remake treatment, the curse of our generation, but on Halloween you should be sure to remain true to the originals – they’ll still make you jump.
Jamie Lee Curtis became the ultimate scream queen after her iconic role in Halloween, facing off against Michael Myers.
The Creature Feature
Often providing a good laugh as well as a good scare, creature features are sure to have you squirming in your seat. A development of the old monster movies, which saw the likes of Dracula, Frankenstein (both 1931), The Mummy (1932) and The Wolf Man (1941) take to the screen, the creature feature focuses more on horrific monstrosities of nature now that we seem to prefer our vampires and werewolves shirtless and brooding. The iconic creature feature is, of course, Jaws (1975), and although it remains a steadfast classic there are many more out there to be explored. Not one but three killer sharks are present in Deep Blue Sea (1999), or for a different sharp-toothed beastie, a giant crocodile disturbed the waters of Lake Placid in the same year. If you prefer your creature features with maximum levels of ridiculousness, Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus is an intentionally appalling riff on the genre, whilst 2010′s remake of Piranha 3D throws more sex, nudity, blood and gore into one movie than ever before. Of course, Mega Shark has to be commended for its inclusion of what is possibly the greatest movie scene ever…
The Supernatural Horror
The genre that generally creeps everyone out is the supernatural horror – ghosts, ghouls and other unexplained phenomena may seem to be an irrational fear if you don’t believe in the supernatural, but just wait until you go to bed after watching a good scary movie. You’ll be checking under the covers for the invisible presence of the demon from Paranormal Activity (2007), waiting for Samara from The Ring (2002) to crawl out of your television, and hoping that death doesn’t come calling as in Final Destination (2000). The unseen and unstoppable forces of these movies are frightening because you cannot escape – this genre is closely linked to that of religious horror, featuring possession movies such as The Exorcist (1973) and the influence of the devil in films like The Omen (1976). But surely you’ll be safe – as long as you don’t watch the cursed video tape, or attract the attention of the demon, or escape a fatal accident… Right?
In this iconic scene, Samara climbs out of the well on the television screen before slowly crawling towards the screen itself, breaking the third wall and exiting the TV to claim her next victim.
And finally…
The Self-Referential Horror Movie
There’s only one film series to really mention in this concluding section – the Scream franchise began with the original Scream in 1996, and its successive sequels continued to parody the horror genre as a whole, right up to the recent release of Scream 4 (2011) which references the remake and reboot trend of the industry today. Remember – you have sex, you die. Don’t say be right back, because you won’t be right back. Oh, and always double tap, because the killer you just shot/stabbed/electrocuted WILL get back up.
Ghostface is a famously incompetent killer - he falls over, staggers around and is generally a clumsy character.
Happy Halloween!
- Kat Humphries