by Jason Lusk

Created on: October 10, 2007

Horror movies have always enjoyed a certain popularity, but their mainstream popularity goes up and down as time passes. Looking at cinema history, a renewed interest isn't wholly surprising.

However, it does seem that popular entertainment has gotten somewhat bland. Romances and comedies push their limits, sometimes successfully, but there seems a need in many for the extreme, for venturing into taboo territories, and that is usually provided only by the horror genre.

Relief is probably the greatest treasure of human emotion, but it cannot exist without the trauma or stress that leads up to it. In a horror movie, you go through one tense moment after another, until it builds to such a crescendo that you are almost begging for release. That release is usually in seeing the evil defeated, or, depending on the story, coming to terms with a difficult situation. In any case, people are relieved to see the hero or heroine make it out alive.

Even if it causes nightmares, there seems to be something the psyche needs, and the horror film relieves or satisfies that need. Fear is the most primal emotion; it drives ninety percent of what we do: We won't touch an electrical cord if our hands are wet; when driving down a tree-lined dirt road in the middle of the night, we try to make it out of there as quickly as possible. We need a release for our fears, which comes with entertainment. If the main titles being released are films that have little or no scare-value, and if that becomes a trend, something will be out of balance.

Most people are rather conservative, in that we like to know that things will turn out all right. When we see a character go through a series of terrors and then overcome them, our desire for that light at the end of the tunnel is nurtured.

Aside from our psychological and emotional needs, many people simply enjoy scary situations. If we can experience them in fantasy, all the while knowing that we can return to the real world where we are relatively safe, then it's all good.

Of course, the horror genre has taken a few cheesy turns, and at times it has become repetitive. People like the unexpected. And it seems that the rut is finally beginning to break and new ideas are beginning to take shape, something I believe is long overdue.

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