A2 Media Studies Horror genre Essay

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How do you account for the growing popularity of the vampire film sub-genre?

The genre of horror is an extremely imprecise category because there are too many sub-genres/hybrids, which make ‘horror’ difficult to define.  Psychological horror films are a sub-genre, which rely on character fears, guilt, beliefs and emotional instability to build tension.  They also rely on messing with your mind rather than using gore and violence.  ‘Slasher’ films are too a sub-genre of horror, which typically involve a psychopathic killer who stalks and graphically murders a series of adolescent victims in a random and unprovoked fashion.  The only certainty is, that horror films aim to frighten their audience whether it’s using gore or playing tricks on your mind.  

There are now so many of the vampire movie kind, that it has been made a sub-genre in itself.  All of the Vampire films contain the reoccurring codes, conventions and iconographies which ‘frame the audience’s expectations,’ (Chandler).  One of the key signifiers within a vampire movie is blood, because blood is what the vampire thrives off and thus creating fear, which may be a possibility for the popularity of Vampire film sub-genres, because blood is associated with death, so the tension is built up and the audience’s hearts may start to race in anticipation, and it is this sort of adrenaline that audiences love.  Throughout the decades there has been remake after remake of this sub-genre, and the iconographies they all have in common involve the mise-en-scene, by which I mean the gothic, isolated castle, which creates the vulnerable fear of being alone.

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‘Nosferatu’ was the first Vampire film, released in 1922.  It was a black and white, silent movie which had a very gothic feel to it and this feel continued to be stretched and moulded to make the Vampire genre we have today.  The next version of Dracula was made in 1931, and following this film there was a surge of popularity from directors to create Vampire movies.  

 There are many other reasons as to why Vampire film sub-genres are so popular, for instance the pleasures that are offered to the audience.  Perhaps it could be the identification ...

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