INTRODUCTION

What follows is, what I hope will be, a spooky and macabre journey through some of the films that I myself love but which can cause the fainthearted to look away in terror! . Horror films are not to everyone's taste but I have decided to make it my mission to get to the root of why they are so popular and hopefully add a few more people to the list of diehard horror fans. Due to the fact that there is so much variation within the horror genre not all the films reviewed here will be horror films but many will encompase variouse types of horror, including Thriller and SciFi. Many of the films I'll be reviewing will certainly fit into more than one genre of film but will all have something 'spooky' or 'scary' about their content.

Film-ocalypse

To hear more informal yet informative film reviews please do vistit Film-ocalypse, a weekly POD cast hosted by myself, Jake Blandford, Karl Metcalfe,  Jas Bhattle and Neil Feder.











Why do we love horror?

There seems to be little else so moving, provoking and beautiful as a really good horror movie.

Horror films allow us to escape from reality in an almost dream like way, they invoke a powerful emotional response and engage with our nightmares. Fear is arguably the strongest human emotion and everyone of us has something we're afraid of as well as some level of darkness in our lives. By displaying this sense of horror that we all share on the screen the film makers are helping to make us feel better about our own worries and problems that we face in our every day lives. Even if we do feel grumpy or upset at least we're not being chased through a dark wood by a psycho with an axe!



The Phantom from Phantom of the Opera

It's often easy to relate to the fear that a character in a film is feeling even in an larger than life scenario. It's exciting to watch and gives us a thrill not knowing what's round the next corner and thinking 'No! Don't go through that door!' Moments like these cause us to access primitive instinctual parts of the brain that deal with fight or flight, this creates an internal battle between fear and curiosity so that we can be trembling on the edge of our seats but still desperately want to know what's round that corner!

The hum drum bore of every day life does not allow us to experience real terror and excitement like that of which we get when we escape into a good horror film. This is why people love horror so much and why horror stories have existed as far back as prehistoric cave paintings. Tales of horror have always been an important part of culture throughout history and throughout the world.