Horror Movies That Redefined The Genre
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Horror movies are considered like subpar movies with the only added value being like a roller coaster that you’ll forget quickly, when it’s not falling flat. However, if the vast majority of movies produced to make a buck fall into that category, that’s because there are strict code to the genre.
Over the years, few movies dared to defy these rules, and it either made them fall into oblivion, or updated the book and incentivized others to copy them. Today, we’ve selected the movies that influenced the horror genre in a meaningful way, and that are still referred to in modern filmmaking.
Table of Contents
5 Genre-Defining Horror Movies
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1. Halloween
Halloween isn’t the first slasher movie, this achievement goes to Black Christmas. However, Black Christmas didn’t have the impact of Halloween for two reasons: John Carpenter and Michael Myers. Halloween started the trend of having a boogeyman that felt almost mystical. In the first movie, even though presented as human, “The Shape” is cold, never shows any emotion or hesitation and can move around like a ghost.
This character associated with the iconic soundtrack by Carpenter and his directing talent made the slasher genre what it is, and many followed with Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and many more being inspired by Halloween’s iconic serial killer.
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2. Alien
Ridley Scott’s Alien is breaking many rules of horror as we knew it, and sci-fi monsters. The monster isn’t coming to Earth, it’s on an abandoned planet that the characters come to disturb. The movie also plays around with your expectations, because the characters that appear as leaders throughout, will inevitably die, and Ripley isn’t presented as your traditional final girl. She’s smart, but at the beginning she isn’t standing out.
Moreover, the danger here are multiple and really terrifying. Thanks to the work of H.R. Giger, the Xenomorph has biomechanical features and defies all biological concepts we know. It’s impossible to compare it to an animal we know, making it unpredictable. It also has a life cycle that you understand without being told through exposition. There’s an egg, a facehugger finds a host, the Xenomorph develops inside and kills the host, period. The Nostromo has become a staple of how we represent spaceships corridors, and everything just works flawlessly.
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3. a Nightmare on Elm Street
Wes Craven has been an important figure in horror, and before Scream redefined the slasher to make it a dark meta comedy, he created Freddy Krueger. This character, in the first episode at least, is even scarier than any serial killer with a knife or machete, because you can’t outrun him, he’s in your dreams.
The inability to sleep is one of the scariest ideas for a horror movie. If you sleep, you die, but it’s inevitable. Then there’s Freddy himself, his burnt face haunted many kids dreams both in the films and in real life. Robert Englund portrays him to perfection and his ability to make fun of the people he kills makes him even more terrifying.
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4. The Exorcist
William Friedkin’s The Exorcist works because it’s approached like a documentary. It’s magnified, but the intention is to ask the question: is the devil real? It then develops the suffering of its characters, which are all, in a way, possessed by something. Then, there’s the make-up and visual effects which make the exorcism work to this day. The movie works so well that it has been banned, and that many people are still scared of it.
Unfortunately, Friedkin’s legacy has been more than underwhelming, and there are thousands of movies that try to recreate The Exorcist, but never succeed. Even The Exorcist itself has now become a self-parody.
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5. The Shining
Even though Stephen King hates it, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is what happens when one of the best directors ever, adapts a novel from one of the best authors. Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duval are incredible in this movie, Kubrick’s attention to detail still has people analyzing the movie to find meaning, and it’s scary to see a man descend into madness.
Shining proved that horror movies could offer more than a cinematic experience. It’s an auteur’s take on horror, and it probably humbled a lot of directors at the time.
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There Are More Movies To Present
This is a short selection of the horror movies that redefined the genre, and there are many more that we didn’t include in the list. We invite you to let us know if you would like a second part, and you can also use the comments below, or contact us on Instagram and Facebook to request movies.
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