Films are motion pictures that are created for entertainment and have different themes that they focus on and are classified according to the themes. Films also can be educative instead of being for pure entertainment. Most educative films are classified as documentaries because they focus on real-world events while some films dramatize the real-world scenarios. Different films have different goals to achieve for the intended audience. Films spend a lot of money to ensure the graphics and other details are perfect so that they can communicate the intended message to the viewers (Williams 39). Preference for movies can also be highly linked to psychology where people with different levels of intellect and other demographics for social classification tend to watch different types of movies.
Scientific research by Andrade and Cohen (288) shows that affinity for various types of movies is affiliated with certain behaviors. People can be psychologically characterized by understanding the types of movies that they watch. Film preferences are reflective of the values, attitudes, and evaluations that can be used to characterize a wider array of schemas and values. People with no regard for human rights will be fixated on horror movies while those who are obsessed with power and money will enjoy gangster movies. The film aspects are also used to communicate the various aspects of a person’s personality and can occur subconsciously. For instance, a person can display their machoism by being fixated movies with main characters who have bodies that overly built from excessive workouts and steroids in some cases or those with hand to hand combat to prove toughness, explosion, gunfire and numerous death occurrences, kidnappings or the main character saying catchy phrases (Gunter 112).
Choices on movies can be used as criteria to determine how people are seen by others which answer the question of why people watch certain genres of movies. People who enjoy horror films often try to display machoism and bravery and people who watch movies with high adrenaline chases are thrill-seekers and often love to fantasize. Different movies also have different purposes based on the theme of the movie (Grant 8). According to Hanich et al. (130), sad films are used to invoke emotions from people and often people who watch them are emotional and connect heavily with the scenes in the movie while those who avoid them are afraid for their emotional responsiveness to be seen by others. Males, mostly, avoid emotional and sad movies out of fear of being seen as weak or less manly because of crying.
Remakes are movies that use an earlier movie reference as the main source of material. There are various types of remakes such as remakes of movies from earlier movies because of advancement of film technologies that were used in the earlier setting of the movies, and there are remakes that comprise an interpretation of comic books as source material. Some remakes have been faced with high negative criticism from viewers while some have received a positive welcome from the audience (Gunter 121). The perception of the movies is often seen from the strength of the themes presented in the remake and ability to reach out to a large viewer base which can help make the sales skyrocket.
Horror movies are a part of real life and can be compared to cases where subjects have been kidnapped and physically abused continuously for years such as those committed by Ariel Castro. The case of Ariel is one out of many where others have been brutally murdered or tortured and taken through inhumane treatment. Horror movies are depictive of the evils in society while adding a theatrical twist to them to create entertainment. The movies allow the viewers to experience the thrills of being in danger without putting then in actual harm. Watching the movies gives the audience an experience associated with danger, and they can learn from the movies. For instance, movies that revolve around kidnapping, stalking or other socio-psychological disorders can teach people how to know if they are being followed and how to survive in the hands of a person with the socio-psychological disorder.
Horror movies also address some issues in society such as beliefs in dark magic, witchcraft, and speculations that there are other life forms which are predators of humans. These movies are often inspired and driven by imagination, but they also collect information from old texts and beliefs. Horror movies display complex ability to flirt with various genres that can be covered such as the supernatural, the realistic, sadistic, serious, and hilarious aspects of being human. The audience is able to experience death, and other horrific events from a supernatural and psychologically disturbed point of view and the viewers are taken on a journey that invokes the full emotional spectrum (Andrade and Joel 291).
Horror movies are characterized by their ability to scare, frighten, or startle the audience despite the involvement of multiple genres. Movies such as “Jaws” by producer Steven Spielberg was a comedy that turned into horror and made people terrified of the water. The movie is still considered one of the scariest films in the genre, more than forty years after its production. The use of lighting, sound, and sudden actions are some of the notable characteristics that have made the films great. Other movies such as Hills have Eyes, Friday the 13th, Silence of the Lambs, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, Halloween, and
Seed of Chucky are some of the movies that have been rated as some of the scariest movies ever made (Williams 44).
The challenge with horror movies is that they might cause permanent damage to a person’s perception and understanding of the various concepts portrayed in the films hence making the viewers sadistic. Despite the films being based off real-world occurrences and attempts to make them entertaining and to teach lessons, some viewers tend to adopt the tendencies and endanger the society. Benjamin Scott stabbed his neighbor more than a hundred times while Mathew Tingling tortured a friend so that he could get his personal identification number with both suspects citing that their actions mimicked death from Saw, the movie (Hanich 130). These events are a few of the numerous inhumane events that have occurred where the suspects have tortured their subjects, eaten parts of their body, and mutilated them in a similar manner to various horror films.
Horror films are a genre of film like other films and are open to interpretation by the audience similarly, to how they interpret other movies. Despite there having been cases of actions inspired by the movies, the fraction is a small percentage which cannot be used to justify the necessity of the films. Some suspects who have been arraigned and convicted of murder and other gruesome crimes have cited that their actions were inspired by movies. Movies of other genres have also inspired people to behave in a certain type of way such as people speeding on highways mimicking movies such as the Fast and Furious
franchise that comprises high-speed chases. According to Williams (71), horror movies are good because they portray real issues in society and failure of a person to differentiate between entertainment and guidance should not be blamed on the movies but on the psychological state and level of understanding of a person.
Works Cited
Andrade, Eduardo B., and Joel B. Cohen. "On the consumption of negative feelings." Journal of Consumer Research 34.3 (2007): 283-300.
Grant, Barry Keith. "Screams on screens: Paradigms of horror." Thinking after Dark: Welcome to the World of Horror Video Games 4 (2012): 2-17.
Gunter, Barrie. "Do Sex, Horror and Violence Sell Movies?." Predicting Movie Success at the Box Office. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2018. 109-126.
Hanich, Julian, et al. "Why we like to watch sad films. The pleasure of being moved in aesthetic experiences." Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 8.2 (2014): 130.
Williams, Jessica L. "Horror Movies, Horror Bodies: Blurring the Freak Body in Cinema." Media, Performative Identity, and the New American Freak Show. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2017. 37-77.
