I have never been one for horror films, mainly because they all seem cliché and thus, aren’t scary. After watching Peeping Tom directed by Michael Powell, I have realized that my perception of horror films is based more off of contemporary films. Michael Powell was able to create a realistic situation that most viewers could easily relate too. The psychotic protagonist Mark appears as an average man within society until you start to pay closer attention to him. To also help us relate and sympathize with Mark, we are shown a traumatic childhood experience in which his father puts a lizard on him and videotapes the incident. And finally, the one not so normal thing about Mark is his fascination with murdering people and videotaping it. Michael Powell was able to get into the viewers mind by creating a sympathetic feeling with Mark’s traumatic experience and by also placing the viewer behind the camera during the murder scenes. These techniques proved wildly successful and have been used in other well-known horror films such as Halloween.

It is basic human nature to care for other people and so we easily sympathize or empathize in certain situations. One situation most people are easily sympathetic to is something happening to a child, who we consider to be innocent beings in our society. During Mark’s childhood, the viewer is led to believe he is treated more as a science experiment than a child. His father, researching fear videotapes Mark for most of his childhood placing Mark in different situations that typically evokes fear. In one scene we see Mark’s father place a lizard on him and Mark is forced to let the lizard move about him. As humans it is in our nature to feel bad for this child. Now that Mark is grown up and we see how he spends most of his time we can justify why he is a little creepy. It is normal for us to want to take the blame away from Mark and say it is not his fault because of what happen to him as a child. Michael Powell used this to connect to the viewer and gain their sympathy for Mark.

The second technique Powell used to get into the viewers mind was by placing them in the shoes of the protagonist. This is actually how the film starts; by placing the viewer behind the camera as Mark murders one of his victims. In every one of the murder scenes excluding when Mark dies, the viewer is placed behind the camera as if they are the one committing the murder. Although, we are all obviously not murders; it emphasizes the point that a murder doesn’t have to be someone special it can be just an average, regular person or so they appear that way to most in society.

In Peeping Tom, Michael Powell is able to create a work of art portraying an average citizen who also happens to be a murder. By grasping the viewer with the traumatic experience of Mark and placing them in the eyes of the killer, Powell is able to connect with each viewer in this chilling thriller. Powell’s techniques appeared again in later popular horror movies. In John Carpenters Halloween, protagonist Michael loses control as a child and murders his sister. He is later locked away and escapes back to his hometown, the site of his childhood killing. As he stocks and murders individuals of the community we see the killings through his eyes. These techniques were extremely successful in their time and I believe we have gotten away from reaching the viewers mind within the horror genre. The horror genre needs to find ways to reach the viewers through sympathy or empathy and finally, make them feel like they are apart of it. For true fans of horror, feeling as if they are in the film is the best way to be scared and the cliché techniques horror films are trying to use now days are simply not going to cut it.