Horror Sub-Genre Research
Horror is as wide and as intricate as a genre could be with the many sub-genres then themselves split into further horror experiences. Each genre has earned its tropes and cliches, each with its masterpieces and its total failures and each with adoring fans ready to argue its supremacy in internet forums across the lands. It is also worth noting that despite there being defined categories for almost every style of film there is, it isn't uncommon for genres to steal aspects from other popular films, creating a confusing labyrinth of ven-diagrams wherein all horror films can be crossed with others, some named, some not. For example, the horror TV show 'Dexter' should be labeled a horror as, thematically, it is about a serial killer, displays viscera and gore routinely and dabbles with the horrific things man can do to his fellow man as a central concept. However, it also contains comic relief, action, romance and thriller aspects to create something unique. Not only that but the actual sub-genres are allocated their medium on a subjective basis unique to the viewer, whilst a film like 'Silence of the Lambs' may be classed under 'gore and disturbing horror' due to its disturbing central conflict and scene-specific imagery, someone may chose to file it under psychological horror instead for the white-knuckle inducing exchanges between Hopkins' Lecter and Foster's Starling when in actual fact, both scenes gain their gravitas from each other and the characterization, spoken or otherwise, within. Bear this in mind as we look through the archives to dig up every facet this wonderful platform for phenomenon has to offer!
Gore & Disturbing Horror
This genre is characterized mostly by the core terror stemming from the unsettling circumstances our characters find themselves in, usually with either themselves or the villain at large cutting off something in the most visceral way cinema will allow. Although there is no formula for this, it is unique from 'Body' horror, which we'll cover later, by the fact that the pornographic approach to filming its gore isn't the point but rather the punctuation of the set piece. quote-on-quote "gory" films don't rely on the extended brutalization of one character but instead on the wholesale dismemberment of a group of people.
The torture sub-sub genre is a medium known best for violently abusing its cast without killing them wherein the antagonist will use his or her victims for prolonged pain; unlike slashers where the kill is the attackers purpose, films like Saw usually feel like they have to punish the victim for a self fulfilling reason, asking that their prey either learn from the suffering or that the pain be a reminder before they die.
TORTURE:
The torture sub-sub genre is a medium known best for violently abusing its cast without killing them wherein the antagonist will use his or her victims for prolonged pain; unlike slashers where the kill is the attackers purpose, films like Saw usually feel like they have to punish the victim for a self fulfilling reason, asking that their prey either learn from the suffering or that the pain be a reminder before they die.
TORTURE:
- Saw
- Hostel
- I Spit On Your Grave
- 120 Days of Sodom
- Seed
Splatter films are more about cranking up the largest body count they can in the most violent ways they can as quickly as they can. Films such as Battle Royale and Piranha specialize in those guffawing laughs where the shear violence of it is what is used as a selling hook.Coined by the legendary George A. Romero who's own films are classed as part exploitative fiction and part social commentary although splatter has been famous for showing the vulnerability of the human body.
Splatter:
Splatter:
- Battle Royale
- Dead Snow
- Piranha
- Blood Feast
- Dawn Of The Dead
In a strange turn of events, Cannibal horror is a surprisingly popular genre usually including what could charitably be called 'backwards' characters and more colloquially as 'red necks' or 'back water' savages so inbred and horrific that they've no reservation about hunting down our traditionally young and sexy cast before turning them into chow for them and theirs. Cannibal horror has always struck a cord in a way that only 'extreme' horror can in that it touches on something that really could happen, that being the consumption of our fellow man, not the mutated super powers bit. I find it interesting personally that arguably the most famous example, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, is based loosely on an actual serial killer and cannibal, Ed Gein, who's story makes all 5 of the films below look relatively tame and one which even makes be take a double take so I shan't recount it.
Cannibal:
Cannibal:
- Wrong Turn
- We Are What We Are
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- Cannibal Holocaust
- The Hills Have Eyes
And finally for the Gore/Disturbing horror genre, we have Extreme/Realistic horror: Drama that depicts violence of any nature in an unflinching, horrific way that goes more than several times to the BBFC for review. I would like to point out on a personal note that films like this, the ones that garner horrific attention, tend to capitalize on a sexual horror, depicting the crassness of some lurid act. Theres not far I can go with that observation besides theorizing that the sexual horror not only taints something taught for the longest time as sacred and that the central audience, primarily 18-24 year old males (although that is a gross generalization) are still within a sphere of sexual immaturity so threatening that is very uncomfortable.
Extreme / Realistic:
Extreme / Realistic:
- A Serbian Film
- A Clockwork Orange
- Megan Is Missing
- Funny Games
- Audition
Psychological Horror
Psychological horror is a tricky thing in that the degree to which the antagonist can intervene is thin, fears of things like spiders, in fact, I'd go as far as to say that the allure of psychological horror is that the titular threat is entirely within the grasp of the protagonist, usually playing up the fact that the danger is within the mind of our hero, or at the very least, where the threat is so prolonged that the characters perception of the situation is what causes the drama.
Phobia and Isolation horror all play up the idea that something you are specifically scared off haunting you: Arachnophobia, Claustrophobia, Hydrophobia, Ballistaphobia and so forth are all examples of a central premise a film of this sub-sub genre might take on, usually for the sake of a characters study or to talk about how guilt effects the mind in a different way.
Phobia and Isolation horror all play up the idea that something you are specifically scared off haunting you: Arachnophobia, Claustrophobia, Hydrophobia, Ballistaphobia and so forth are all examples of a central premise a film of this sub-sub genre might take on, usually for the sake of a characters study or to talk about how guilt effects the mind in a different way.
Phobia and Isolation:
- Buried
- Open Water
- Oculus
- The Descent
- The Village Of The Damned
This genre of horror is one of the stranger of the sub-sub genres in the sense that it plays on the fear of many people, the hysteria, the tangible panic as something sinister comes to fruition. As an aside, I find it fascinating that almost all fanaticism horror's grow out of either an extreme religious or socialist corruption, usually presenting an environment in which the cast are painted as complicit in the ill-happenings of false deity or who have developed habits we'd deem immoral or wrong when contrasted against our own cultural values.
Fanaticism:
- The Wicker Man
- The Mist
- Children Of The Corn
- The Village
- The Cruicible
Madness and Paranoia as a thematic core is, to me, one of the most interesting places horror can take us as the psychological decent is what characterizes the minds of almost all major antagonists and, although I think videogames are a better medium for exploring it, it is a subject matter entirely malleable to the director's whim, meaning that the horror can be stylized entirely. One of my personal favorite horror experiences, P.T, demonstrates this idea perfectly as reality is over ridden by the horrid on-goings of the house you are in. Finally, I think horror stories about madness have more room to develop interesting characters within, characters we can distance ourselves from but at the same time study and marvel at, usually due to their forced perspective not so much being something we can personally relate to but as something the protagonist is so devoted to that their motivations make sense, no matter how disturbing.
Madness and Paranoia:
Madness and Paranoia:
- Rampage
- Apocalypse Now
- Jacob's Ladder
- Take Shelter
- Donnie Darko
Killer Horror
Ah, the classic killer genre! Although savagely brutal, Killer's are probably the most understandable and easy to follow films of their kind in the sense that, at their heart, the tension and conflict comes about from someone you either can't beat or who is immensely difficult to dispose of chasing after our stars, picking them off one by one in the most blood-curdling ways possible. Although you could argue that Hitchcock's Psycho is the first of its kind, I'd argue that John Carpenter's Halloween is where the genre really found its feet, setting up the template with the teenage victims and the masked madmen on the prowl. Either way, the Killer genre (which Synth primarily is) has thrived and fallen, booming into excess before the market became overpopulated and called for a new scare phenomenon.
First up we have the legendary Slasher sub-sub genre, a medium best described as film after film of horrible people doing horrible things to slightly less yet still pretty reprehensible people. Slasher's have always held a place in the audiences heart as the killers are so memorable, if you look at almost every famous slasher film, there will be an iconic killer and in the majority of cases, a famous season or event to attach it to such as the killings of Ed Gein or, on the other end of that spectrum, Christmas.
Slasher:
First up we have the legendary Slasher sub-sub genre, a medium best described as film after film of horrible people doing horrible things to slightly less yet still pretty reprehensible people. Slasher's have always held a place in the audiences heart as the killers are so memorable, if you look at almost every famous slasher film, there will be an iconic killer and in the majority of cases, a famous season or event to attach it to such as the killings of Ed Gein or, on the other end of that spectrum, Christmas.
Slasher:
- Friday the Thirteenth
- My Bloody Valentine
- Halloween
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- A Nightmare On Elm Street
Lesser known than most sub-sub genres, a Crime or Giallo horror film is one where in the horror stems from a more grounded threat, usually in which there is emphasis placed on the police or a detective who is chasing the villain of the piece, this doesn't mean that it cannot contain supernatural elements or "tropes" of the horror convention just that there is a realistic approach to how that crime is dealt with, usually over a longer period of time than most horror films.
Crime and Giallo:
Crime and Giallo:
- Deep Red
- Saw
- Candy Man
- The Girl Who Knew To Much
- The Silence Of The Lambs
As I mentioned in my opening, a lot of these genres have cross overs and share cultural or societal ideas and, as I mentioned again in the cannibal section, they tend to share a similar trait of having Backwoods, Backwater and Redneck aggressors. I shan't waste time repeating myself but it is fascinating from a cultural standpoint how much of America's media goes into demonizing people of the back countries as these uncivilized, inbred savages, almost to the same extent that early 20th century fiction such as 'Heart of Darkness', 'The Jungle' and 'When The Going Was Good' depicted African natives, a practice we now look back on with weeping shame. Make of that what you will.
Backwoods/Redneck:
- Wolf Creek
- Frontiers
- Motel Hell
- The Devil's Rejects
- Inbred
We also have home invasion, a surprisingly niche genre that involves a group of people, traditionally a family, being attacked by one or more armed assailants from the comfort of their own home. Home invasion flicks have always tended to have generally better approach to film making than any of the other genres as they are confined to one relatively small location and as such, must use the intricacies of editing and writing to keep the same environment visually stimulating and practical from a narrative perspective.
Home Invasion:
Home Invasion:
- You're Next
- The Last House On The Left
- The Purge
- The Strangers
- Inside
Monster Horror
Monster horror, as the name suggests, is a horror film wherein the central threat is non human in nature, now although there are technically hundreds of sub-sub genres to this, I'm going to group them relatively as they're more or less all self explanatory but the gist is that the wrath of something lacking any moral convictions is attacking in a predatory nature, usually with the hopes of devouring (and it some creepier cases impregnating) its victims for the audiences amusement.
The first category in and of itself could be split down even further but this branching diagram has to end somewhere, that's right, Zombies. Or the Infected. Or the Undead. Or the Reanimated. Or...you get the point. Zombies are as much a staple of pop culture at this point as aliens, mummies, werewolves and vampires so even with superficial differences in the rules of their respective universes, you know what you're gonna get.
Zombie:
The first category in and of itself could be split down even further but this branching diagram has to end somewhere, that's right, Zombies. Or the Infected. Or the Undead. Or the Reanimated. Or...you get the point. Zombies are as much a staple of pop culture at this point as aliens, mummies, werewolves and vampires so even with superficial differences in the rules of their respective universes, you know what you're gonna get.
Zombie:
- Night of the Living Dead
- Resident Evil
- 28 Days Later
- World War Z
- Planet Terror
Speaking of Vampires and Werewolves, this genre (yes I've put them together as at this point they are as synonymous as bread and butter) plays more on the fear of fragility and of mankind's lusts give a predatory catalyst, both creatures have garnered somewhat of a romantic spin in recent years with travesties bestowed upon cinema like Twilight but rest assured a true film for our fanged friends is violent, seductive and deals with a need to resist the temptations that we as humans are faced with and that our more 'lizard brain' elements urge us to indulge in. Also interestingly, they deal with a horror resigned to hunting at night which does present a very clear way of surviving the danger but once the sun goes down, it's good night and good luck.
Vampire/Werewolf:
Vampire/Werewolf:
- 30 Days of Night
- Fright Night
- From Dusk Till Dawn
- An American Werewolf In London
- The Howling
Animal horror movies I've always found have held a degree of camp no other genre can quite match, which doesn't make a lot of sense when you consider that, if anything, they are the most likely of all the monster scenarios to happen. Perhaps it comes from the fact that most animal horrors are either played for laughs or because, in their hey-day, the visual effects weren't good enough and instead required terrible stop motion Plasticine, terrible cgi or pneumatic and electrical bots that, even in their best incarnations, shatter the illusion of their tangible existence in seconds.
Animal:
Animal:
- Jaws
- Lake Placid
- The Breed
- Anaconda
- Cujo
Paranormal Horror
Next up we have paranormal horror, a genre so wide spread and (at the time of writing) over saturated that any attempt to lump it under define banners would ultimately discriminate more than one single column. You'll notice that the majority of Horror films deal with concepts such as witchcraft, possessions, hauntings, poltergeists and so forth capitalize on the fear of the unknown where the benevolent antagonist cannot be physically harmed and, in most cases, cannot be defeated at all, with the conclusions to such films usually ending with the entity succeeding in killing/breaking its victims or with the victims submitting to its will and doing whatever it takes to put them at rest.
Paranormal:
Paranormal:
- Paranormal Activity
- The Blaire Witch Project
- The Last Exorcism
- The Conjuring
- GhostWatch
With the main genres of horror covered, I'm going to speed through some of the auxiliary categories just to make sure I've been as thorough as possible
Comedy-Horror
Comedy-Horror is probably the closest thing to onomatopoeia that the film industry has with two of the most divergent things found in one film although, in honesty, its more representative to call them comedy films with horror elements as almost all resort to parodying the tropes and cliches everyone figured out were funny when the first Scream film dropped. Now it's easy to take my jaded views on comedy horror for the nihilistic loathing I sell myself on its just that the majority are about as funny or engaging as a rock surrounded by damp water, which isn't to say all are bad; the films that don't descend into full on ironic b-movie jokes and that have actual characters with arcs and set pieces can be quite funny as they don't rely on their own ironic self awareness and stand-up as good films in their own right.
Comedy-Horror:
Comedy-Horror:
- Zombieland
- Gremlins
- The Voices
- Shaun Of The Dead
- Cabin In The Woods
Sci-fi Horror
It's rare for a genre to be so beholden unto a single film but it has to be said, with Riddley Scott's classic, Alien, this genre would either be lumped in as another horror movie or could even be non-existent. Science Fiction has always danced with commentary and in horror this is no exception, using the narrative devices of a world unknown to not only frighten the audience but to instigate discussions on any matter of things present in our actual society. In the same way that H.P Lovecraft revolutionized horror literature, you needn't got far to see the influence of the likes of Harlan Ellison, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov in the more thought out members of this sub-genre.
Sci-Fi:
Sci-Fi:
- Alien
- They Live
- Event Horizon
- Screamers
- The Thing
Romance-Horror
Romance Horror is one of those things I've never personally understood, although it isn't uncommon for brilliant horror films like Hard-Candy and The Fly to feature the subject of romance, sex, affection, intimacy and relationships, the comedy rule applies in that they are mostly romantic films spiced up with horror elements (although it isn't
Romance-Horror:
Romance-Horror:
- Let The Right One In
- Bram Stoker's Dracula
- Twilight
- Knock Knock
- Life After Beth
Creepy Child Horror
The creepy child sub-genre, aptly named for its central focus on having a terrifying child reeking havoc on its central cast, unlike most of the genres here where I can point out a consistent theme or why the use of a certain device might be used from a commentary standpoint, however, with the exception of a fear of youth, the corruption of innocence and the false acceptance of failed parenting, I can't really put it down to a specific underlying trend. Either way, the genre has had a few gems worth mentioning.
Creepy-Child:
Creepy-Child:
- Orphan
- Momma
- The Exorcist
- The Omen
- The Grudge
Gothic Horror
Gothic horror is traditionally characterized by dark and ancient iconography, things like medieval castles, vampires, gargoyles and the likes. Gothic films have more or less fallen out of fashion from modern film culture, instead only referencing the sub-genre through other platforms (such as drawing upon Gothic styles for the outfits of The Matrix) which in many ways is a sign of the times, black and white had always served Gothic films, hiding the relative degree of camp that the Dracula's and the Wolfman's of the day thrived in and as such, they don't frequent modern cinemas.
Gothic:
Gothic:
- Dracula
- Frankenstein
- The Orphanage
- Nosteratu
- Underworld
Body Horror
As a genre, Body horror has risen to prominence off the back of films such as the Human Centipede which have reveled, much like the torture genre, in making people suffer. However, the nature of this horror type leads to peculiar things with the audience being drawn in by how strange the transformation can be, from hacking off limbs to stitching others back on, this often very disturbing sub-genre is as varied as it is facile.
Body:
Body:
- Tusk
- The Human Centipede
- Tetsuo: The Iron Man
- Society
- Hard Candy