THE HISTORY OF HORROR

In the first half of the 1990s, the genre continued many of the themes from the 1980s. The slasher films A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween and Child's Play all saw sequels in the 1990s, most of which met with varied amounts of success at the box office,

The later 90's brought with it a brand new ways of scaring audiences - computer generated effects. This was both good and bad. Two main problems pushed horror backward during this period: first, the horror genre had worn itself out with the nonstop slasher and gore films in the eighties. Secondly, the adolescent audience which feasted on the blood of the previous decade grew up, and the replacement audience for horror films were being captured by the explosion of science-fiction and fantasy films, thanks to the special effects possibilities

 

To re-connect with its audience, horror became more self-mockingly ironic and comedy, especially in the second half of the 90's. Peter Jackson's Braindead (1992) took the splatter film to new levels for comic effect. Wes Craven's Scream (1996), featured teenagers who were fully aware of, and often made reference to, the history of horror movies, and mixed ironic humour with the shocks. Along with I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Urban Legend (1998).