What defines horror? The dictionary describes the word horror thus:
1. Intense fear and loathing
2. Anything causing such a feeling
3. Strong aversion
Being a child of the 80's I need to take my stance from that particular era of horror. The era which ignored Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies and Mummies and created new antagonists to cause feelings of fear and dread. In many ways horror of the 1980's set itself apart and in ignoring the boogie men of a silver screen age they created franchises which bordered on the ridiculous but created characters once seemingly synonymous with a movie going generation and resulting in much popcorn launching.
Horror films of the 80's also went on the remove the antagonist and force the viewer to put themselves in the footsteps of the protagonist. But in turn create antagonists the viewing audience would come to love and root for, which flipped the paradigm more than the film makers and studio alike could have conceived.
I lament the current horror films, and more so the Blair Witch approach which is now so freely adopted to poor effect. One day I'll write (Blog) something a little more substantial about this using the New Line Cinema tent pole (this one is easy, you shouldn't even need a link or to Google search!) as my villain of choice...
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