Night of the Demon

The movie Night of the Demon is an example of the horror genre because there is a disgusting and repulsive monster that is impossible. It is not an obvious monster until the last days of the curse of the runes when they find out the monster and the curse is in fact real. I think the film does deliver the emotional effect of the horror genre because it was frightening that you knew that the monster was real from the opening scene. There is cosmic fear in this movie because the characters, until they actually saw the monster after everything that happened to them up to that point, never know that the curse is real. Holden was a huge skeptic so when all the things started happening the fear of the unknown was instilled into him. He didn’t know all that could happen from the runes when Carswell gave him that piece of paper and once he found out what it was that caused the awful things happening to him.
It is both an overreacher plot and a discovery plot. Holden discovers that the supernatural does exist and that it can directly impact his life as Carswell and the runes showed him. When he first came into the movie though, he was a scientist who wanted to disprove Carswell’s cult and the supernatural that was associated with it. He claimed that it didn’t exist and he wanted to prove them wrong but it turned out to be true and he quickly found out he was in over his head. In this way it is also the overreacher plot because he ended up getting over his head when the supernatural of the cult turned out to be real after his discovery of it.
The most suspenseful scene in the film was when Holden was trying to give the runes paper back to Carswell. It was intense because you didn’t know if he was going to be able to give the paper back to Carswell without him noticing. It looked like the bad outcome of Holden keeping the paper was about to happen because whenever he tried to give Carswell anything he wouldn’t accept it. The good outcome was that Holden was sneaky enough to put the paper in his coat pocket without Carswell noticing and getting away with it, sticking Carswell with the unfortunate monster outcome.
There is a social theme in the movie because Holden is a skeptic. This causes tension between him and the other characters who do believe and his skepticism almost gets him killed. The director had some good techniques to heighten the scary parts of the movie. Like most scary movies music is a big part. Music makes it more intense and sometimes if a movie is already too frightening for me I have to close my ears because the music and the visual is just too much to handle. Also, the director used a lot of lighting and shadows in the movie. It was a good horror movie and I enjoyed it very much.