The Evolution of the Horror Genre
A look at horror films past, present and future
Story by Bailey Mount Editor-in-Chief & Jason Lauckner Chief Executive Producer
Spiders. Bats. Ghosts. Clowns. All these words hopefully evoke a mental image that coincides with something you’ve seen lately in a horror movie — especially the last one. With “It” shattering box office expectations in September and bringing an end to one of the worst summers in cinema profits, horror films are once again at the forefront of cinema. Although it’s only recently that the genre is receiving praise for its artistic merit, it’s had arguably one of the biggest influences on pop culture. From the early Universal Pictures horror monsters like Dracula to the minimalist found footage style of “The Blair Witch Project,” horror films seemingly have the ability to freeze time in a single moment, having viewers memorize each frame in detail.
They’ve also had their fair share of brushes with Hollywood greed. With the industry currently striving to turn any standalone film into a cash-grabbing franchise, audiences simply aren’t biting anymore. After all, some things can only scare us for so long until they become corny, and with the rise of professional streaming services like YouTube and Netflix producing content that’s more appealing, it’s even harder to convince people to go to the movies.
That’s not to say that the genre is dead. Like a good George A. Romero film, it has a habit of resurrecting. It’s just that in this modern age, as Derek Thompson of “The Atlantic” writes, the film industry as a whole is in an “arms race to mint new franchises for a domestic audience that is seeking out original stuff.”
With that in mind, how has horror kept our attention? And can it maintain it?
Most of what makes horror so great is its ability to evolve and stay ahead of its unsuspecting audience. With over 100 years under its belt, we felt the best way to predict where horror is going is to first look at where it’s been and what’s been done to death.
1930s-1970s
Despite foreign success in the 1920s, it was not until Universal Pictures set out to establish its own world and style of horror in Hollywood that American audiences were introduced to the genre. With that came classics such as “Dracula”, “Frankenstein” and “The Mummy.” Universal would go on to dominate the horror industry for the next thirty years, adding “The Wolfman” and “Creature from the Black Lagoon” to its repertoire of monsters.
However, the studio began to cheapen the genre by saturating it with multiple spinoffs and sequels to franchises. The reason, writes Rob Young of Cinelinx, was due to “the real-life horror of World War II.”
Film studios in general brought classic icons into different universes as people “abandoned horror films in favor of comedies.” By the time they realized that it was time for a shakeup, we already had campy, drawn out monster titles like “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” and “Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein”.
When the war ended, audiences settled back into cinema. With significantly less stress in their lives and an economic boom in effect, they were hungry for new ways to be scared. By the end of the 1950s, they got it with “The Fly,” “The Blob,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Night of the Living Dead,” and “The Haunting.”
Though these films didn’t define a new wave of franchises, they served as a placeholder for Renaissance-like films. They provided new scares and techniques to the genre while also taking a crack at artistry with the infusion of themes like racism, as seen in “Night of the Living Dead,” and abortion rights, as seen in “Rosemary’s Baby.”
Moving into the 60s, we started to see the first major evolution in Hollywood. New franchises and subgenres created during these years would go on to shape the horror genre as a whole, with films such as “The Exorcist” providing a more twisted version of the traditional ghost story as well as bringing horror back into the minds of mainstream audiences. Things would only go up from there.
1980s-Present Day
Riding the success of the 1973 big-budget “Exorcist” film, the horror genre rebooted again. The next wave came in the form of slasher flicks, creating a surge in popularity in the mid-1970s and early 80s. Films like “Halloween,” “Friday the 13th,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Child’s Play” quickly thrust the horror genre onto a mainstream audience, creating a new lucrative trend that seemed promising for both filmmakers and production companies alike.
The slasher genre became popular because it was a reflection of its audience. When “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” came out in 1974, Americans were going through a period of unprecedented cynicism and disillusionment that would carry on into the 1980s as a result of the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy, and the Watergate scandal. Audiences were no longer afraid of monsters; they’d seen much worse. A new thing needed to scare them.
This new thing came in John Carpenter’s 1978 film “Halloween.” Widely considered to be the pinnacle of the slasher genre, it set a new precedent for horror — a masked, quiet killer stalking helpless teenagers in the American suburbs or wilderness, all on a shoestring budget. With only $320,000 to make the film (a little over $1 million today), Carpenter popularized the real terror of a human killer.
Hollywood was quick to capitalize on that popularity. Once again, the film industry commodified the horror genre and the originality all but disappeared, just like in the 1930s and 40s. “Friday the 13th” in particular spawned seven sequels in nine years, signifying that Hollywood had once again learned nothing from its success.
“Hollywood seems to thrive on a parody of the “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” mentality and frequently ignores audience demands despite plunging ticket sales.”
That was the last big trend until the late 2000s. There were a few films of note — “Alien,” “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “The Evil Dead” — but no clear trend emerged until audiences were scared by the found footage, based on a true story, supernatural phenomenon that was “Paranormal Activity.”
After that, it seemed that we were entering a horror renaissance. Good films were everywhere — “The Conjuring,” “Sinister,” “The Babadook,” “Insidious,” “Get Out” and “The Purge.” We had movies with political/social messages, movies that dealt with psychological issues and some genuinely good supernatural horror films, but no outstanding trend. It was great.
Another dry spell seems imminent, however, as Hollywood seems to thrive on a parody of the “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” mentality and frequently ignores audience demands despite plunging ticket sales. Here’s what we think is next for the genre.
The Future of Horror films:
Even with prestigious titles like “Get Out” and “The Witch,” Hollywood will struggle to hold onto its audience as they continue milking franchises for all that they are worth. Filmmakers aren’t just competing amongst themselves anymore. They’re competing with streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, professional-level productions on YouTube, and an increasingly aware audience that’s noticing and not falling for old patterns.
Although some franchises like “The Conjuring” and “Insidious” continue to succeed, the likelihood of these properties drying up is high. Audiences, particularly people in our age demographic, are now looking outside the cinema for new entertainment, leading to the rise of a highly artistic subgenre now known as “highbrow horror” — horror films that try to do more than just scare audiences.
This is bringing about some great films — “It Comes At Night,” “It Follows” and most recently, “Mother!” — that seem to be moving in different creative directions, blending genres together to not only bring back audiences, but present them with an entirely new product.
On the other hand, Universal Pictures has been conducting similar experiments with horror/action fusions to no success.
A great modern example of this would be the upcoming Universal Pictures “Dark Universe.” Dracula, The Wolfman and company are coming back to the big screen. Already released films like “I, Frankenstein,” “Dracula Untold,” and “The Mummy” received lackluster responses from audiences and failed to even make their budgets back from ticket sales.
But even this misstep seems indicative of another horror evolution.
If there’s one thing the horror genre has proven, it’s that it’s capable of adapting. If Hollywood doubles down and cashes in again on its current horror film franchises, it’ll find a continuous downward trend of people going to the box office. Hollywould would be better off trying to revitalize its box office by not reviving Frankenstein, but allowing new life in the form of a new evolution in horror films.
