About horror movies - Essay Example

m the Japanese filmmaker called Miike, whose films provide prototypical examples of “Asia Extreme” other directors such as Kim Ki-duk and Park Chan-wook have expanded the category by rendering ultra-violet narratives set against serene portrayals of the troubled psyches of doomed protagonists. Following the success of magic lantern shows in the late 1890s, the first cinematograph was introduced into Japan in 1897. In 1899, the first Japanese film was shown at the Kabuki-za, Tokyo. Kabuki, one of the foremost traditional Japanese theatrical forms, would provide rich material for the burgeoning art of the visual image and would become the template for many Japanese horror films since.

Tales of horror and monstrosity have long concerned themselves with notion of hybridity in their exploration of those regions where categories fail to maintain their integrity. Ghosts, for instance, are their very liminal entities negotiating the supposedly unbridgeable gap between the world of the dead and the realm of the dead. In addition, monsters are perpetual scramblers of social codes, often troubling the nebulous (Gladwin). There is always something nasty about horror movies that speaks instinctively and directly to humans.

Evolutionary psychology that has undergone evolution for millions of years has caused the human mind to be ingrained to certain triggers of fears. For example, there has been fear of dark places where predatory animals might be laying waiting for the prey. There is also fear of animals that tend to have sharp teeth since they might easily make a meal out of us. Such fears have been engrained into the human developmental psychology to an extent that research shows that children can easily spot a snake on a computer’s screen compared to how they can spot a flower (Gladwin).

This idea explains the shape of monsters commonly used in horror movies; that is, creatures that have sharp teeth or appear like snakes. The fear of being eaten alive has always