Everyone's favorite slasher from 'A Nightmare On Elm St.'
Slasher
First and foremost, perhaps the most popular genre of horror movies - the slasher movies. These
would be your Elm St, Friday the 13th, Halloween, etc. movies. Movies where there is one killer
who pretty much kills anything in its path. Typically with a knife or some other kind of slashing
tool (hence the name!). If you truly luck out you'll find a series of slasher movies with the same
killer. The best part of these is that the reason the killer is killing is made very clear in the first
movie. Maybe even the second. By the third, fourth, etc. movies - well, then they're just killing
for the hell of it. If you enjoy lovable knife-wielding psychopaths, then maybe Slasher movies
are for you!
The only problem with slasher movies is that they too can be subdivided into further genres - pretty much the same ones that follow in this guide. Try to keep that in mind as we go along!
Ghost
If the movie you are watching starts with scenes of olden times and you're certain that the
movie you got takes place in modern day, odds are you got yourself a ghost movie (or possibly a
demon or monster movie, depending on what takes the emphasis -if it focuses on a house, then
its ghost). The best ghost movies don't even have ghosts in them. Rather they have scary
houses that have - almost always - a new family move in. Typically a family with small
children. Old people, single people, or childless families will never appear in ghost movies. In
that house, horrible things happen to them with no scientific basis. There's always someone
who instantly believes it's ghosts and a skeptic. A Shaggy and a Thelma, if you will. Usually
people die, or are never heard from again. They tend to really play on the audiences
imagination rather than actually showing anything. Some examples of this would be:
Poltergeist, Amityville (though that could also be a straight-out slasher), Seance, the Carpenter, and Ghost
Dad.
Monster
If the movie takes place in the woods, it is almost definitely a monster movie. With the term
monster I can mean any number of things: werewolves, trolls, goblins, weird mutants,
whatever the hell Pumpkinhead was, etc. I don't mean monsters like Godzilla. Hes too big to
be frightening on a personal level. Monster movies are typically very brutal and personal.
Monsters will savagely kill people, one by one - usually the death itself isn't seen (at least early
on, as the monster is almost never seen until the last third of the movie) but you often see the
end results - be they a horribly mangled body/parts, or just a lot of blood. With killings purely
for food - or perhaps some kind of weird ritual, the deaths tend to be random and quick. Not a
whole lot of reason to keep someone alive if you're just trying to eat them. So, the deaths are
gross, but at least they go by quickly. Oh, also there's usually a LOT of them. Monsters get very
hungry. Some examples would be: Dog Soldiers, Pumpkinhead, Scarecrow, Scarecrows, and
Trolls.
Monster-Animal
Not to be mistaken with the Monster movie genre, Monster-Animals are a genre all to their own.
This involves animals terrorizing a town or community. They do this by either growing massive
in size or numbers. Usually, to do this, the movies use pretty terrible CGI (depending on the
budget, I suppose). They also tend to deal more with the people affected by the animals than the
animals themselves. One exception to that rule would be the now-classic Snakes on a Plane.
However, more examples of this movie include: Lake Placid, Arachnophobia, and... I dunno...
Jaws?
Torture
Something that has become particularly popular, and is leaving most of the other genres of
horror in the past, is the torture movie (often called torture porn on account of the gratuitous
nature of most of it). In these movies people are tortured. Sometimes there's a reason, often
there isn't. I dunno... I guess I just don't find these movies all that scary - just gross. There's
no real mystery or solution. There's just a lot of cutting and bone-breaking and screaming.
Usually in a confined space. The saddest thing is, this genre is starting to take over other genres!
For example, the second Texas Chainsaw re-make. It had a lot of pointless Hey! Lets cut this
guy up! scenes. Granted, that was in the original, but the original left a little bit more to the
imagination. Examples of this genre would be: Saw, Saw 2, Hostel, Saw 3, Hostel 2, and Saw
4.
Zombies!
Moving away from my least favorite genre, we come to what is probably my favorite genre:
zombies! Zombie movies are incredibly simple: there's something to trigger one zombie. That
zombie kills 2 friends, then those zombies kill 2 more friends, etc. It all turns in to a giant fight
between the few survivors and the now massive number of zombies. Zombies have very little
going for them in most zombie movies: they're stupid, they're slow, they fall apart at a glance,
they're stupid, they're poorly organized, they're messy, and they're not all that bright. However,
they do have a pretty great strength: they are pretty much unstoppable. Many zombie movies
give the heroes the shoot the zombies in the head solution that will kill zombies, but just as
many leave that out and make the zombies all but immortal. Most zombie movies end up with
entire towns/cities/countries filled with zombies which makes things pretty interesting. Some
examples of zombie movies are: Day of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, Dead Alive, Land
of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, Undead... pretty much anything with the word dead in
it. Or zombie. It's fairly common too.
Disease
Some disease movies are often mistaken for zombie movies. For example, the 28 Days Later
series isn't about zombies. It's about a terrible plague that gives people some characteristics of
zombies, but more so those of rabid animals. Also, disease movies tend to be either big-budget
movies with actors you've actually heard of (for example, Outbreak or Virus) or made-for-tv
movies with barely any actors at all. These movies are always in cities (as really, an outbreak
kinda needs to be in a heavily populated area in order for it to be actually interesting), an often involve animals or terrorists. Also, if it's a plague, it could be an act of God/the Devil. Hard to say, really. Some examples of this genre include: Outbreak, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Ebola, and the Stand. Remember the 'the Stand' mini-series? That was awesome.
Alien
Alien horror movies are usually connected to the other genres of horror movies (there's a bunch, for example, that have zombies attacking as a result of alien invasions). These were a lot more popular in the early days of b-movies, but occasionally a few get made nowadays that would more fit into the genre of horror rather than sci-fi. Usually the aliens come to earth and kill people either for domination or as a power source. Like the ghost movies, alien movies tend to have the staple character of the believer and the skeptic, and also like the ghost movies, most of the actual bad stuff happens off camera. Also, alien-movies can claim different technologies so almost anything at all can happen, no matter how ridiculous. Examples of the alien-horror movie would be: Alien, Aliens, Signs, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Killer Klowns from Outer Space.
Freaks
Some horror movie viewers move a bit away from the scary side of horror and venture towards the weird and grotesque side instead. This is where the freak movie shines. The freak movie usually involves killings and whatnot, though usually they come at the hands of a disfigured or mutated person who doesn't know any better and should, instead, be an example of pity. If you want to see a movie with a lot of really weird (often not too well put together) costumes, make-up, and fake body-parts coming out of weird places, then this kind of movie is for you! On the downside, freak movies, for the most part, almost always leave any sense of plot behind if a series spawns from it and instead focus on topping the last freak. Examples of freak movies would be: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3+ and the Basketcase series.
Classic
In fairness, any of these movies I've mentioned can easily be called classic, but here when I use the term, I'm referring to the actual classic horror movies. The classic monsters. Movies that aren't actually scary in any way, but that's okay because they are (loosely, for the most part) based on actual classic works of literature. Yes, today's big name literature was the b-movie fodder of yesteryear... before they had b-movies... But yes these are the movies that are almost guaranteed to be played on any given station on any given Halloween, as well as show up at your door looking for treats in the form of small children's Halloween costumes. They've become Halloween cannon, and probably always will be. Movies of this genre include: Frankenstein, the Mummy, Dracula, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and The Wolf-Man.
Child
I thought for a while that the idea of having a child as the villain of a horror movie was a newer convention, however I am realizing that they've been around for a very long time. For some odd reason, a crazed killer or possessed person or demon is way creepier if it's a kid. I dunno why, but it just is. It's science. Child horror movies are almost always based in the present, and tend to be very subtle. Even if the movie is about a kid who uses an axe to cut up everyone in his neighborhood, you'll almost never actually see it happen. And, to go back on what I just said, they almost never use weapons. Instead the deaths just kind of happen in a way that makes them seem perfectly natural, yet somehow connected that that really creepy, (almost always) black-haired kid. Usually the kid is also very tidy, which I guess also adds to the creepy? Science is crazy sometimes. The child is, 90% of the time, stopped by their own parent(s) who see the kid for what they truly are. The other 10% of the time the kid is stopped by another kid, or not stopped at all. I should also mention, almost all child-horror movies involve dead animals in some way. Some examples would be: the Omen series, Silent Hill, the Ring, the Grudge, and The Exorcist.
Demon/Devil
Speaking of the Exorcist, we get to our next genre Demon/Devil movies. I am, for the sake of diversifying from the other genres, saying these are movies that actually have demons/devils in the movie, not just possession (like in the Exorcist or Amityville). These movies have full-out demons and devils, walking around, wreaking havoc wherever they see fit. They are often portrayed as really bad costumes, really bad CGI, or really bad animatronics. There are two ways these movies work: 1. Some teens are doing some kind of ritual (incantations or something) and they screw up and open a gateway to hell which demons can escape from. 2. Someone wants something real bad and makes a deal with someone who ends up being the devil, and then collects with interest. The killings in these ones are usually pretty brutal as demons have no remorse as well as crazy-assed powers that need not be explained. Some examples of demon/devil movies are: the Wishmaster series, Long Time Dead, and Little Devils.
Inanimate objects
The last genre we will look at today in our guide is one that is really hit-or-miss. Movies about inanimate objects killing people (be it through possession, some kind of curse, etc.) are either really clever or really, really cheesy. Cheesy for a b-movie. That's bad. The plus side to these movies is that the killer isn't human, as with many of our genres, but when the killer is a chair or a doll, you really gotta try hard to make the thing not look realistic. At the same time, things about these objects become questionable, and often to get around these questions new powers will be bestowed upon the object for seemingly no reason at all. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. One thing these movies often has a lot of is irony, or rather, attempted irony. Something like a stuffed animal killing a person by pulling out their innards and stuffing them with cotton. That kind of irony. Also, the deaths are usually that gross. They can afford to be. The object can even stay right next to the mangled gross pile that used to be a person and no one will suspect a thing. I mean, how could a cute little doll kill someone, especially that bad? It almost makes you pity it. Some of the many examples of this genre would be: the Child's Play series, Dolly Dearest, Dolls, Pinochio's Revenge, Chopping Mall, and the Unnameable 2.
Well folks, that's my brief guide to just some of the many different genres or horror that there are out there. Really, there's something for everyone! Assuming, of course, that you like horror. If you don't like horror, why did you just waste your time reading this article?
For now, get out there and find of these movies and judge for yourselves! Get working on your own B-Movie-Palooza! I think a bunch of simultaneous 'paloozas would be just grand. Get to it, people! Get to it! In a spoooky fashion!