The topic chosen is about how the monsters in horror genre differentiate from the monsters of other genres. First of all, monsters are non-human creatures. Except for their weird looks, their behaviours are very different from humans. In popular culture, monsters can be divided into many types, innate, created by humans, and transformed by humans. Of course, usually monsters act as villain roles against humans.
Before discussing the subject, it is significant to understand the difference between the horror genre and other genres. The horror genre is to scare the audiences by using dark, weird and cruel visual effects. It uses the worst imagination of human as a vehicle to terrorize by giving audiences the rush of adrenaline(Toomer, 2019). Other genres (let’s say adventure or dark fantasy) on the other hand, is based on heroism and uses action and adventure to make the audience climax and excited, as according to Toomer (2019), adventure and dark fantasy serve as the alternative to audiences wanting a gloomier, foreboding experience without the threat of imminent death or gruesome imagery.
Horror monsters and dark fantasy monsters share many common elements, for example; other than scary appearances, they are always set in the world stage of illusion or science fiction such as bleak unforgiving worlds, high-tech world, alien world, and the world after destruction. However, they do not refer to each other, which means that the only difference between them is that adventure and dark fantasy do not have the label of horror (Toomer, 2019). For example, monsters in the live-action genre “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, their appearances can be scary, but after all, they are merely consumables for heroes, sometimes even funny. Another example is the Venom, a supervillain from Spiderman series. His horrible appearance is not under the alien created by a Swiss artist H.R Giger. But unlike the alien, the Venom always shows his evil side by fighting or torturing the hero.
To differentiate horror monsters and other genre monsters, one must look at the degree of performance which can be divided into three general elements; uncertainty, the number of appearances and cruelty. Uncertainty; is the one that makes the horror monsters so frightening, because as Ebiri (2020) mentioned, we cannot grasp where the monster might come from or cannot predict their behaviours. For example, the alien known as xenomorph always attacks humans in weird ways and sudden patterns, making the audience suddenly frightened. The number of appearances means horror monsters do not appear many times, and the audience has never had a chance to take a good look of the whole figure of the monster. Because they increase the mystery by hiding, classic scary monsters such as aliens, predator, Freddy, IT-the pennywise and other ghost creatures like conjuring and the ring. As Ebiri (2020) emphasized if revealing the number of appearances of the monster will decline the horror effect of the monster. The cruelty; is the most obvious view to distinguish horror monsters by looking the way of the monster to hunt humans. For instance, horror monsters always attack or kill human victims with brutal ways like blood, severed limbs, and eat alive etc to make horror atmosphere to reach a bloody effect. Famous horror monsters like chainsaw massacre, Jason, Freddy, predator and other monsters from zombies category like resident evil, once the human victims locked by them are often killed horribly (Scott, 2020).
Finally, monsters in horror genres present the fragile side of human beings in reality, whether physically or spiritually, people are always unable to resist the coming of death. The human ability is helpless and useless, once humans are dragged into the doom, the pain endure is not only pain but a sad one profoundly (Owen, 2018). Generally, horror monsters are like disasters in reality, like natural disasters and economic storms that brought incomparable grief to mankind. Nevertheless, Human beings are still intriguing and killing each other, which are also a common plot in horror movies.
Reference:
Toomer, J. (2019). The difference between dark fantasy and horror. UPROXX. Retrieved https://uproxx.com/hitfix/dark-fantasy-vs-horror/
Ebri, B. (2018). What makes a movie monster scary. Vulture. Retrieved https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/what-makes-a-movie-monster-scary.html
Scott, J. (2020). What is horror: definition and examples in film. Studio binder. Retrieved https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-horror-definition/
Owen, M. (2018). Our age of horror. Aeon . Retrieved https://aeon.co/essays/horror-is-a-dark-and-piercing-reflection-of-our-anxious-times
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