the horror genre in recent years has become a stale place place in recent cinema history, full of over used techniques and cliche scripted events. its easy to overlook genuinely interesting and unique horror films as the genre as a whole has had such negative media. from here ill be talking about horror films both critically aclaimed and internationally panned and how certain techniques for mise en scene, lighting, sounds and camera usage have now become staples for the genre.
stanley kubricks "the shining" has become a symbol of classic horror films. right from the opening shot we know that this film will be an eerie, psychological horror from its use of birds eye views of the snowy and desolate mountains in which the film is set, most likely to have been suspended from a helicopter and with a wide lens. this accompanied with the use of total silence creates a foreboding atmosphere, which foreshadows certain scenes in the play later on. Kubrick was a master of suspense, steering away from jump scares and loud obnoxious musical scores, he preferred slow building tension, highlighted in dialogue and eerie camera angles.
another film that features a unique approach to the horror genre was mid 2015's "unfriended", the entire movie is set within a skype call, with there being no footage of anything other then the computer screen. this movie isn't necessarily scary, but rather another psychological horror. what makes this movie particularly unnerving is the fact that everything in the film is identical to our lives, especially our computer usage. cluttered desktops, spotify tabs and applications litter the screen behind the Skype call. we relate to the characters in the movie as we can easily put ourselves in there shoes as this is how we live our lives, on the computer.another horror movie cliché is the found footage movie. a type of film that can be shot on a tiny budget. these movies will usually feature very shaky uneven camera techniques, zero non diegetic sound and natural lighting. a particuraly good example of this is 2007's grave encounters, where a group of amateur film makers film strange going ons inside an abandoned estate. whats interesting about the mise en scene in this film is that throughout every shot, items and furniture will move around, sometimes subtlety and sometimes dramatically. this adds to the tension of the movie, where everything changes, and nothing stays the same
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