Supernatural horror film is a film genre that combines aspects of supernatural film and horror film. Supernatural occurrences in such films often include ghosts and demons, and many supernatural horror films have elements of religion. Common themes in the genre are the afterlife, the Devil, and demonic possession. Not all supernatural horror films focus on religion, and they can have "more vivid and gruesome violence". [1]
For such films and other media, critics distinguish supernatural horror from psychological horror. Mathias Clasen writes in Why Horror Seduces, "Supernatural horror involves some kind of suspension or breach of physical law, usually embodied in or caused by some kind of supernatural agency such as an uncanny monster or a ghost... psychological horror, on the other hand, does not involve violations of physical law, but features naturalistic (if often implausible) menaces and scenarios." [2] Paul Meehan also distinguishes supernatural horror films from psychological horror, "The threat to societal order comes from something preternatural or anomalous: a haunted house, a curse, or a monster like a vampire or a werewolf." [3]
Charles Derry, writing in Dark Dreams 2.0, contrasted supernatural horror and pseudoscientific horror as "two basic methods of explaining things away" in horror stories. Derry wrote, "Into the supernatural group one could fit all the monsters and horrors that are somehow involved with religions and ritual," highlighting witchcraft, Egyptology and reincarnation, and zombies. [4] Aaron Smuts considers horror "to be a genre with two main sub-types, supernatural horror and realist horror" and that they "have different charms". [5]
While fictional horror-themed literature, theatre, and other visual culture had existed, the terms "horror film" and "horror movie" as known in a contemporary term did not become common place until 1931 and 1932. Film serials became popular in the United States in 1913. [6] Supernatural events and characters in 1910s film serials were rare. [7] Only two serials explored the supernatural at length, with The Mysteries of Myra (1916) and The Screaming Shadow (1920) while most serials which suggested the supernatural such as The Gray Ghost (1917) with no actual narratives involving supernatural events. [7] The supernatural horror film had what author Paul Meehan described as "its genesis" in early German expressionism in the 1920s and early 1930s with films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu . [3] During the Universal Studios first horror film cycle, supernatural horror was the dominant cinematic mode of the genre between the release of Dracula (1931) and House of Dracula (1945). [8]
In the early 1940s, supernatural horror films had more contemporary settings, but the genre was ultimately superseded by psychological horror films. By the end of World War II, the supernatural horror genre "met its demise", being overshadowed by the atrocities of the war. By the 1950s, science fiction horror films had replaced supernatural horror films, and psychological horror films also became more popular in the same decade, ultimately eclipsing supernatural horror. [8] The few supernatural horror films that were produced in the 1950s were often set in haunted houses, a continuation of haunted-house films prevalent in the 1940s. [4]
In the 1960s, horror films like The Innocents (1961), The Haunting (1963), and Rosemary's Baby (1968) used supernatural elements but were not directly about the paranormal. Other horror films used supernatural themes to code elements being censored by the Motion Picture Production Code (or the Hays Code). The Haunting featured a female protagonist interested in another woman, and she was a queer coded character. Such characters were commonplace in the history of supernatural horror films. [9] Sue Matheson wrote of Rosemary's Baby, "[It] popularized depictions of witchcraft, demonic activity, and the Devil on screen and generated a wave of supernatural horror movies." [10] By the 1970s, the films The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976) revived the supernatural horror genre. Literature was used as source material like with the earliest films, with the written works of Stephen King being adapted into Carrie (1976) and The Shining (1980). The film Poltergeist (1982) was also a genre highlight in the 1980s. [11]
In the 2000s, violent horror films called "torture porn" were popular. By the end of the decade, supernatural horror reclaimed their popularity. The found footage film The Blair Witch Project had achieved fame in 1999, and in the late 2000s, Paranormal Activity succeeded with the same film technique, which led to a film series that lasted until the mid-2010s. [12]
In the first two decades of 21st century, supernatural horror films explored a variety of themes and styles. Movies like Martyrs Lane (2021) focused on grief and loss, while Oculus (2013), Personal Shopper (2016), and Hereditary (2018) explored unfinished family business and personal trauma. The genre also incorporated real historical events, as seen in The Devil's Backbone (2001), Los Silencios (2018), and La Llorona (2019), which draw on the Spanish Civil War, Colombian armed conflict, and Guatemalan genocide, respectively. Films like Host (2020) reflected contemporary fears, with The Others (2001) and Insidious (2010) revisiting haunted house narratives, and The Conjuring (2013) grounding its story in real-life paranormal investigations. The genre also blended horror with comedy, as in Housebound (2014) and Extra Ordinary (2019), to explore similar themes. The films employed various techniques, such as jump-scares, tension-building, and emotive performances, to examine deep-rooted fears and societal issues. [13]
The highest-grossing supernatural horror film, adjusted for inflation, is The Exorcist (1973). It has an unadjusted gross of over $441 million with the original release and 2000 re-release combined; [14] the estimated adjusted gross in 2019 is over $1.04 billion. [15] The highest-grossing supernatural horror film, unadjusted for inflation, is It (2017) with a worldwide gross of $701 million. [16]
In 2013, Variety 's Andrew Stewart said supernatural horror films grossed more at the box office than other horror sub-genres. He advised that filmmakers interested in tapping into the profitable market of low-budget horror should focus more on stories about ghosts and the supernatural, as movies about slashers and extreme horror tend to have less consistent commercial success. [17]
Joe Tompkins wrote that following the 1950s, many "Gothic and supernatural horror movies utilize dissonance, atonality, and unusual configurations of instruments to signify all sorts of anomalous, paranormal activity". He wrote that Black Sunday (1960) and The Haunting (1963) "make use of atonal clusters, which operate in sharp contrast to tonal music and thus provide antagonistic symbols for supernatural evil and good (respectively)". He also highlighted that The Amityville Horror (1979) and Poltergeist (1982) "employ various thematic materials ranging from soft-sounding lullabies to atonal outbursts". [18]
According to Janet K. Halfyard, supernatural horror-comedy films deploy various strategies to using music "to simultaneously locate the film within—or at least close to—the horror genre, while at the same time encouraging the audience to laugh instead of scream". [19]
Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes.
Horror is a genre of speculative fiction that is intended to disturb, frighten, or scare. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which are in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon, in 1984, defined the horror story as "a piece of fiction in prose of variable length ... which shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing". Horror intends to create an eerie and frightening atmosphere for the reader. Often the central menace of a work of horror fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for larger fears of a society.
A haunted house, spook house or ghost house in ghostlore is a house or other building often perceived as being inhabited by disembodied spirits of the deceased who may have been former residents or were otherwise connected with the property. Parapsychologists often attribute haunting to the spirits of the dead who have suffered from violent or tragic events in the building's past such as murder, accidental death, or suicide.
House on Haunted Hill is a 1999 American supernatural horror film directed by William Malone and starring Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson, Peter Gallagher, and Chris Kattan. The plot follows a group of strangers who are invited to a party at an abandoned insane asylum, where they are offered $1 million each by an amusement park mogul if they are able to survive the night. Produced by Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver, it is a remake of the 1959 film of the same title directed by William Castle. The film marked the producing debut of Dark Castle Entertainment, a production company that went on to produce numerous other horror films, including additional remakes.
The Haunting is a 1963 British supernatural horror film directed and produced by Robert Wise, adapted by Nelson Gidding from Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House. It stars Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, and Russ Tamblyn. The film depicts the experiences of a small group of people invited by a paranormal investigator to investigate a purportedly haunted house.
A ghost story is any piece of fiction, or drama, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them. The "ghost" may appear of its own accord or be summoned by magic. Linked to the ghost is the idea of a "haunting", where a supernatural entity is tied to a place, object or person. Ghost stories are commonly examples of ghostlore.
Supernatural fiction or supernaturalist fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction that exploits or is centered on supernatural themes, often contradicting naturalist assumptions of the real world.
The Haunting of Hill House is a 1959 gothic horror novel by American author Shirley Jackson. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and has been made into two feature films, a play, and is the basis of a Netflix series.
Edward Warren Miney and Lorraine Rita Warren were American paranormal investigators and authors associated with prominent cases of alleged hauntings. Edward was a self-taught and self-professed demonologist, author, and lecturer. Lorraine professed to be clairvoyant and a light trance medium who worked closely with her husband.
Ghost hunting is the process of investigating locations that are purportedly haunted by ghosts. The practice has been heavily criticized for its dismissal of the scientific method. No scientific study has ever been able to confirm the existence of ghosts. Ghost hunting is considered a pseudoscience by the vast majority of educators, academics, science writers and skeptics. Science historian Brian Regal described ghost hunting as "an unorganized exercise in futility".
The Amityville haunting is a modern folk story based on the true crimes of Ronald DeFeo Jr. On November 13, 1974, DeFeo shot and killed six members of his family at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, on the south shore of Long Island. He was convicted of second-degree murder in November 1975. In December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz and their three children moved into the house. After 28 days, the Lutzes left the house, claiming to have been terrorized by paranormal phenomena while living there. The house became the subject of numerous investigations by paranormal researchers, journalists, and skeptics, including Ed and Lorraine Warren. These events served as the historical basis for Jay Anson's 1977 novel The Amityville Horror, which was followed by a number of sequels and was adapted into a film of the same name in 1979. Since then, many films have been produced that draw explicitly, to a greater or lesser extent, from these historical and literary sources. As Amityville is a real town and the stories of DeFeo and the Lutzes are historical, there can be no proprietary relationship to the underlying story elements associated with the Amityville haunting. As a result of this, there has been no restriction on the exploitation of the story by film producers, which is the reason that most of these films share no continuity, were produced by different companies, and tell widely varying stories.
The horror-of-the-demonic film is one of three subgenres of the horror film that grew out of mid- and late-20th-century American culture.
Ghosts are an important and integral part of the folklore of the socio-cultural fabric of the geographical and ethno-linguistic region of Bengal which presently consists of Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura. Bengali folktales and Bengali cultural identity are intertwined in such a way that ghosts depicted reflect the culture it sets in. Fairy tales, both old and new, often use the concept of ghosts. References to ghosts are often found in modern-day Bengali literature, cinema, radio and television media. There are also alleged haunted sites in the region. The common word for ghosts in Bengali is bhoot or bhut. This word has an alternative meaning: 'past' in Bengali. Also, the word Pret is used in Bengali to mean ghost. In Bengal, ghosts are believed to be the unsatisfied spirits of human beings who cannot find peace after death or the souls of people who died in unnatural or abnormal circumstances like murders, suicides or accidents. Non-human animals can also turn into ghosts after their death. But they are often associated with good luck and wealth in Bangladesh.
Horror films in Cambodia, first popular in the 1970s, have received renewed attention in Cambodian film making since the resurgence of the local industry in 2003. Horror is one of three popular genres into which most Cambodian films can be loosely grouped, the other two being period pieces and melodrama/romantic drama. The fledgling Cambodian industry of the mid 2000s looked to capitalize on the world-wide popularity of Japanese horror films which have heavily influenced Cambodian horror films. Common themes are ghost or spirit hauntings, possession, folk mythology and revenge by supernatural means. The storytelling takes a slower pace than Western horror and relies on suspense, a pervasive sense of doom and dread, and psychologically disturbing events and situations. Unlike its Japanese counterparts however, many Cambodian horror films also feature over the top gore as seen in Western horror.
Syfy Universal Asia was an Asian cable television channel, launched on July 1, 2008, which mainly airs science fiction, fantasy and horror programs and movies. It also airs anime programming. It is owned by Universal Networks International.
Full Circle, released in the United States as The Haunting of Julia, is a 1977 supernatural horror film directed by Richard Loncraine, and starring Mia Farrow and Keir Dullea. Based on the novel Julia by the American writer Peter Straub, it is the first film realisation of one of his books, and follows a woman who, after the death of her daughter, finds herself haunted by the vengeful ghost of a young girl in her new home.
There is widespread belief in ghosts in English-speaking cultures, where ghosts are manifestations of the spirits of the dead. The beliefs may date back to animism or ancestor worship before Christianization. The concept is a perennial theme in the literature and arts of English-speaking countries.
The history of horror films was described by author Siegbert Solomon Prawer as difficult to read as a linear historical path, with the genre changing throughout the decades, based on the state of cinema, audience tastes and contemporary world events.
Horror noir is a film subgenre that blends elements of horror and noir genres. It is therefore considered a hybrid film as such that combines the aspects of horror and film noir, creating a distinct atmosphere that explores themes of fear with mystery, suspense, and shadowy aesthetics. These films typically emphasize a mysterious or unsettling atmosphere, often centering on psychological drama, tension, and darker thematic elements that incorporate aspects of crime. They might explore other themes like unease, paranoia, and the unknown, all while using the visual style of film noir. Horror noir often follows protagonists who face not only external threats, like supernatural forces, but also internal struggles.
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