the.com/horror
the genre that makes you pay to feel exactly what you'd pay anything to avoid
means an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust — or the thing that causes it, including the film and fiction genre built to provoke it
from From Latin horror, meaning 'a bristling, a shuddering,' from the verb horrere, 'to bristle or stand on end.' The word literally describes what fear does to your body — the hair rising on your arms, the skin prickling into gooseflesh. It came into English through Old French in the medieval period, carrying that same physical shudder: horror was never just a thought, but the body's recoil made into a word.
- cheap thrills
- lowest-budget films, highest profit margins in Hollywood
- body knows
- fear and excitement trigger identical chemical reactions
- old roots
- Gothic horror predates the novel itself
- final girl
- a recurring trope studied seriously in academia
- safe danger
- the brain enjoys threats it knows are fake
the exorcist — 1973 film that caused audiences to vomit and faint in theaters; based on true possession case of roland doe in maryland 1949
the shining — 1980 kubrick film inspired by the stanley hotel in colorado and real ax murders at the borden house in 1892
ring — 1998 japanese film based on the urban legend of a cursed vhs tape that killed people seven days after viewing