There was a long way from Nosferatu to The Orphan to get to understand what we know today as horror cinema. Let's take a brief trip back in time to find out a little more about the beginnings of the most important cinema genre.
It might be said that horror started with Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896) by the Lumière Brothers, who created the seventh art. The short film scared the viewers because cinema was a new invention and when they saw the train approaching, they thought it was going to come out of the screen. On the other hand, Georges Méliès also made his contributions with the first horror film called The Haunted Castle (1896), which tells the story of an encounter between the Devil and several ghosts.
Through German expressionism, horror cinema demonstrated great possibilities. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) by Robert Wiene became a worldwide success and made an impact on the history of cinema as it introduced a novel aesthetic with its sets and scenery. Another major influence on the horror genre was Nosferatu (1922) by F. W. Murnau, an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's gothic horror novel Dracula.
In the United States, big screen stories inspired by the gothic literature of Mary Shelley or Allan Poe were created in the mid-1930s. In this decade, different studios produced films starring the most iconic monsters: Frankenstein, the mummy, the werewolf, and the invisible man.
In the 1950s, thanks to incredible technological advances, the tone of horror films shifted from gothic to include certain aspects of science fiction. Decades later, a more psychological and suspenseful horror film was developed with Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography, who made Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963).
One of the most interesting characteristics of the horror genre is to scare the viewer and today there are countless films that fulfill this main premise such as Hereditary, The Seventh Day and It Comes at Night.
Keep an eye out for more news!
