Journal # 1 Greg Frey

Ever since I was young, I have been an enormous fan of horror films and are intrigued by random something’s out of the ordinary. The feeling of adrenalin and suspense while watching a horror film draws you more into the film to make you feel the characters emotions in your seat. The “Mise-en-shot” in my opinion is what makes or breaks the film from being considered a good or a classic movie. A director must be precise when deciding how long to film a certain scene and be careful not to draw out the effect of the characters, monsters, or storyline. If the monster is shown every few minutes, then the effect is lost and the monster seems not quite as scary or disgusting.
An example of a movie that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats shows great directing, and using sectioning of the film or “Mise-en-shot” is Dead Silence. The monster that is considered a ghost in the film possesses her beloved dolls and cuts the tongue from their victims’ mouth leaving a most disturbing image for others to find in the town. The fast and shocking cuts in the movie make the suspense last throughout the duration. Personally, I feel that many films throughout the years have lost their effect on frightening the audience due to this overexposure such as the movie series Friday The 13th Jason being in over half the movie.
Fear is the strongest emotion that we have and are instincts tells us either “fight or flight.” Art horror is the major topic we discuss in class which means that the monster in horror films are both fearsome and disgusting causing people threats of their own well-being. Noël Carroll speaks of a Paradox of Fiction which is the emotional response of any sort to a fictional character which generates a paradox and then asks why do we as the viewing audience, respond emotionally to a which we believe not to exist? We say it is human nature to care, but think about the classic film Physco. He shows no human concern and looks as humans as disposable pleasures.
Typically, the recipe for a monster is classified in five main characteristics: fission, fusion, magnification, massification, and metonymy. Since we are all familiar with them all I won’t explain them however, I feel like the fission monster is more of a believable and entertaining story. I all werewolf films the human is transformed into the wolf man which leads us to have a slight doubt that maybe werewolves can exist. This seems like the more believable a storyline the more drawn in the audience will be.