Horror and Thriller Genres

 In honor of it being October, I have been enjoying watching horror/thriller movies in my free time. Taking this class is helping me notice different techniques of cinematography that help to tell a story. This weekend I watched The Purge and I thought it was interesting that any suspense building moments were kept very short. The camera angles were mostly shown from first person like you were looking through the characters eyes and could see exactly what they were seeing. Or the camera flashed back and forth between what the character was seeing and the emotion the character was wearing on their face. This is a contrast to the suspense movies we've been watching in class because the angles were more so focused on the main character rather that from the main character. This helped build more suspense as we couldn't always see what the character was looking at but rather what they were feeling. I think this is a big difference between horror films and psychological thrillers. Horror/slasher films constantly have action and jump scares that don't require as much suspenseful buildup because the whole movie is meant to be gory and scary.

I think a film like The Purge or other horror movies use storytelling in a different way because it doesn't always have to follow the basic rising action, climax, falling action, resolution plot points. It deviates because the story needs to be developed quicker in order for majority of the film to revolve around the action scenes and jump scares. For example, the characters were introduced quickly and the government narrorator voice announced what the purge is within the first 15 minutes of the film. The rest of it was all action and survival. One thing I still enjoyed in this film was the character development and ethical dilemma that revolves around the concept of the purge. The main character was essentially a vigilanty that saved the people he was with but still wanted to commit murder in revenge of someone that killed his son. This was a dilemma for the supporting characters because they told the main character they still thought killing no matter what was wrong. The main character remained defiant until the end when he listened and realized killing wouldn't bring his son back and probably wouldn't make him feel like there was any less of a deficit in his life. I appreciated the ethical discussion brought into this movie similar to that of the spying happening in Rear Window, and I think it helped the audience grow attachment to the characters.