Postmodern horror is a horror film related to the art and philosophy of postmodernism. Examples of this type of film includes George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead , Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and John Carpenter's slasher film Halloween .
Characteristics of this genre (starting in the 1960s onwards) includes constituting a violent disruption of the everyday world, transgressions and violated boundaries, questioning the validity of rationality, repudiation of narrative and producing a bounded experience of fear (between the audience and the film). [1]
Examples of this include the famous "rules of surviving a horror movie" speech from Wes Craven's 1996 slasher film Scream and the self-aware characters (including the main protagonist) slowly realizing they're living the plot of one in the 1990 precursor There's Nothing Out There. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Scream is a 1996 American slasher film directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson. It stars David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Matthew Lillard, Rose McGowan, Skeet Ulrich, and Drew Barrymore. Set in the fictional town of Woodsboro, California, Scream's plot follows high school student Sidney Prescott and her friends, who, on the anniversary of her mother's murder, become the targets of a costumed serial killer known as Ghostface.
Wesley Earl Craven was an American film director, screenwriter and producer. Amongst his prolific filmography, Craven worked primarily in the horror genre, particularly slasher films, where he mixed horror cliches with humor. Craven has been recognized as one of the masters of the horror genre.
Scary Movie is a 2000 American slasher parody film directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans and written by Marlon and Shawn Wayans, alongside Buddy Johnson, Phil Beauman, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. Starring Jon Abrahams, Carmen Electra, Shannon Elizabeth, Anna Faris, Kurt Fuller, Regina Hall, Lochlyn Munro, Cheri Oteri, and Dave Sheridan, it follows a group of teenagers who accidentally hit a man with their car, dump his body in a lake, and swear to secrecy. A year later, someone wearing a Ghostface mask and robe begins hunting them one by one.
A scream queen is an actress who is prominent and influential in horror films, either through a notable appearance or recurring roles. A scream king is the male equivalent. Notable female examples include Barbara Steele, Sandra Peabody, Linda Blair, Felissa Rose, Olivia Hussey, Marilyn Burns, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Neve Campbell, Daria Nicolodi, Dee Wallace, Sarah Paulson, Vera Farmiga, Jamie Lee Curtis, Taissa Farmiga, Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Samara Weaving, Heather Langenkamp, Shawnee Smith, Emma Roberts, Billie Lourd, Melissa Barrera, Naomi Scott and Linnea Quigley.
The final girl or survivor girl is a trope in horror films. It refers to the last girl(s) or woman alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. The final girl has been observed in many films, notable examples being Psycho, Voices of Desire, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, Alien, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, and Terrifier 2. The term "final girl" was coined by Carol J. Clover in her article "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film" (1987). Clover suggested that in these films, the viewer began by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experienced a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film.
Vampire in Brooklyn is a 1995 American vampire comedy horror film directed by Wes Craven. It stars Eddie Murphy, who produced and wrote with his brothers Vernon Lynch and Charles Q. Murphy. The film co-stars Angela Bassett, Allen Payne, Kadeem Hardison, John Witherspoon, Zakes Mokae, and Joanna Cassidy. Murphy also plays an alcoholic preacher, Pauly, and a foul-mouthed Italian-American mobster, Guido.
Jordan Haworth Peele is an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. He is known for his film and television work in the comedy and horror genres. He has received various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award. Peele started his career in sketch comedy before transitioning to writing and directing psychological horror with comedic elements. In 2017, Peele was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.
Ghostface is a fictional identity that is adopted by the primary antagonists of the Scream franchise. The figure was originally created by Kevin Williamson, and is primarily mute in person but voiced over the phone by Roger L. Jackson, regardless of who is behind the mask. The disguise has been adopted by various characters in the movies and in the third season of the television series.
Postmodernist film is a classification for works that articulate the themes and ideas of postmodernism through the medium of cinema. Some of the goals of postmodernist film are to subvert the mainstream conventions of narrative structure and characterization, and to test the audience's suspension of disbelief. Typically, such films also break down the cultural divide between high and low art and often upend typical portrayals of gender, race, class, genre, and time with the goal of creating something that does not abide by traditional narrative expression.
Comedy horror is a literary, television, and film genre that combines elements of comedy and horror fiction. Comedy horror has been described as having three types: "black comedy, parody and spoof." Comedy horror can also parody or subtly spoof horror clichés as its main source of humour or use those elements to take a story in a different direction. Examples of comedy horror films include Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), An American Werewolf in London (1981), the Evil Dead franchise (1981–present), Gremlins (1984), Shaun of the Dead (2004), and The Cabin in the Woods (2011).
Scream is an American murder mystery and slasher franchise that includes six films, a television series, merchandise, and games. The first four films were directed by Wes Craven. The series was created by Kevin Williamson, who wrote the first two films and the fourth, and will return to direct the seventh film. Ehren Kruger wrote the third. The fifth and sixth installments were directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, with Guy Busick and James Vanderbilt serving as writers and Williamson returning as executive producer. Dimension Films produced the first four films. Spyglass Media Group took over the rights from the fifth film on with Paramount Pictures distributing. The film series has grossed over US$910 million at the global box office.
Scream is a 2022 American slasher film directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, and written by James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick. It is a sequel to Scream 4 (2011), the fifth installment in the Scream film series, and the first in the series not directed by Wes Craven, who died in 2015 and to whom the film is dedicated. It is also the first film in the franchise not to be produced by Dimension Films due to it becoming defunct in 2019, and the first film to be distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film stars Melissa Barrera, Kyle Gallner, Mason Gooding, Mikey Madison, Dylan Minnette, Jenna Ortega, Jack Quaid, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Sonia Ammar, with Marley Shelton, Skeet Ulrich, Roger L. Jackson, Heather Matarazzo, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, and Neve Campbell reprising their roles from previous installments. The plot takes place twenty-five years after the original Woodsboro murders from Scream (1996), when yet another Ghostface appears and begins targeting a group of teenagers who are each somehow linked to the original killings.
Monkeypaw Productions is an American independent film and television production company founded by Jordan Peele in 2012. It is known for producing horror films, such as Get Out, Us, Candyman, Nope, and Wendell & Wild, as well as other films, such as Keanu and Monkey Man.
A social thriller is a film genre using elements of suspense and horror to augment instances of apparent oppression in society. The genre gained attention by audiences and critics around the late 2010s with the releases of Jordan Peele's Get Out and Us, each film highlighting occurrences of racial alienation. Before Peele, other film actors, directors, and critics had used the term to describe an emerging genre of cinema with examples from all over the globe.
Midsommar is a 2019 folk horror film written and directed by Ari Aster. It stars Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor as an American couple who are drawn into a violent cult in rural Sweden. Supporting actors include William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren, Ellora Torchia, Archie Madekwe, and Will Poulter.
Art horror or arthouse horror is a sub-genre of both horror films and art-films. It explores and experiments with the artistic uses of horror.
Nope is a 2022 American Western science fiction horror film written, directed, and produced by Jordan Peele, under his and Ian Cooper's Monkeypaw Productions banner. It stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as horse-wrangling siblings attempting to capture evidence of an unidentified flying object in Agua Dulce, California. Appearing in supporting roles are Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott, Brandon Perea, and Keith David.
Black horror is a horror subgenre that focuses on African-American characters and narratives. It is largely a film genre. Black horror typically, but not always, has Black creators. It often has social and political commentary and compares racism and other lived experiences of Black Americans to common horror themes and tropes. Early entries in the genre include the 1940 Spencer Williams Jr. film Son of Ingagi and the 1968 George A. Romero horror film Night of the Living Dead, which is considered one of the first Black horror films for having the Black actor Duane Jones in its lead role. Blaxploitation horror films of the 1970s, namely Blacula (1972), and the vampire film Ganja & Hess (1973) became prominent examples of Black horror films in the 1970s. Other Black horror films appeared during the 1990s, notably the 1992 Bernard Rose film Candyman and the 1995 anthology film Tales from the Hood, which was directed by Rusty Cundieff and has been described as the "godfather of Black horror".
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