1.  The first article I read is “Why Do People Love Horror Movies? They enjoy being scared”. It is the instinct that people want to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. According to this, most people should dislike horror movie because it can bring the feelings of distress, discomfortable and disgusting. However, actually there are a lot of people who enjoy watching horror movies. The author feels so confused about this and begins to do some research. Generally, people use one of two theories to explain the reason why people like horror movies. The first one is that when people watch horror movie, they is not actually scared, they feel excited. The second one is that people can endure the terror in order to enjoy the euphoric sense at the end. Some researchers are against these two theories. Thought their studies, they find people can experience negative and positive emotions at the same time. Therefore, when people watch horror movies, they are happy to be unhappy.

In the article “Why horror?”, the author also want to find the reason why horror genre can attract audiences. He mentions “ Thus,we are attracted to, and many of us seek out, horror fictions of this sort despite the fact that they provoke disgust, because that disgust is required for the pleasure involved in engaging our curiosity in the unknown and drawing it into the processes of revelation, ratiocination, etc” (p 184). According to this, we can find that Carroll not only believe that  people can have positive and negative feelings at the same time, he also find the reason.Horror movies create many monsters that we can never see in reality like zombies, vampires, werewolf etc. These monsters can evoke our curiosity although they can bring the feeling of distress. But this cannot impact our interest to explore them and the disgust is just the price we need to pay when we enjoy watching them.

2.      The second article I read is “Film view; The high art of horror films can cut deep into the psyche” by Caryn James. When James was very young, he would go with her aunt and uncle and a cousin to watch horror movies every week. This experience promote him to think more deeply about horror movies and he believes that horror movies visualize the truly impossible like devil babies, wolfmen. But the most important thing is that horror movies can “touch our deepest fears, evoking the terror of helplessness, betrayal and death” (para 2). To prove this, he mentions a famous horror movie called “Rosemary’s Baby”. In this movie, Rosemary’s husband offered her to the witches’s coven and drugged her. This would allow Satan to impregnate her. Rosemary wants to find out what going wrong with her life and her body. At this time, he meets a new doctor and this doctor pretends to believe her. Actually, he just wants to be her husband. James points out the frightening experience of watching this movie is not related to demon. It is the sense of abandonment and powerlessness you feel from the movie. Therefore, he believes good horror movies can touch people’s deepest fears inside their heart and this is the reason why people want to watch horror movies.

Crroll in his article also states that the monsters in the horror movie is not the main reason that we acquire the pleasure. He says “Thus, it is not the tragic event in itself that imparts pleasure, but rather, the way it is worked in to the plot” (p 277). So  we are not attracted only by the monster itself. We are mainly attracted by horror narratives. This is more like the views James points out in his article. As a person who very loves horror movies, James mentions a lot of horror movies and compares them. He believes that the stories in the horror movie are more important than monster itself because good stories can evoke people’s feelings like helplessness, betray etc. These are the motivations that drive people to sit in the theater.

References:

Carroll, N. (2002). Why Horror?. In Neill, A. & Riley, A. (eds.) Arguing About Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debates (2nd ed., Chap. 17). New York, NY: Routledge.

James, C. (1990, May 27). FILM VIEW; The High Art Of Horror Films Can Cut Deep Into the Psyche. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/27/movies/

University of Chicago Press Journals. (2007, July 31). Why Do People Love Horror Movies? They Enjoy Being Scared. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 9, 2014 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070725152040.htm

I believe there must be some people who dislike horror scene. But there are also a lot of people who very enjoy the sense of horror like me. Last week, I watched the horror movie “ Annabelle” with my friend. When the heroine saw the demon in the underground storage and wanted to run away, actually I was scared by that scene. However, I still cannot help myself watching the movie. I believe this kind of complicated feeling which horror brings is its attractive place.

Mise-en-scene, diagetic sound and non-diagetic sound is three common factors in the horror films. Using these factors can help directors create different effects that they want. From the Buffy episode, we can find the camera focuses on the face of Buffy at the beginning. She is in the class and is listening to the lecture carefully. We can see her expression clearly. I believe this is a mise-en-scene because mise-en-scene focuses on what can be seen in the picture. From this scene, we can know that Buffy is a student and she might be one of the main characters. This mise-en-scene I choose cannot contribute to the aesthetic of horror, but it is also important because it can help us to have some understandings about the main characters’ identity, age, surroundings etc. When Burry patrolled in the campus, we can hear the sound of her footstep.Also, we can hear the music which is not visible in the screen. The sound of footstep is the diagetic sound and the music is the non-diagetic music. These two kinds of sound combined can create the sense of horror. When we hear them, we can feel that something bad will happen.

Mise-en-scene, diagetic sound and non-diagetic sound combined in the film not only can make us feel scared, they also can bring back our curiosity. It is interesting that these factors can create the sense of horror.