10 Golden Rules For Making The Perfect Horror Movie

Okay, let me get this out of the way: No, not every horror film needs to be a "message movie". A film can just exist purely for the purpose of giving an audience member nightmares. Now that I've preempted that complaint, let me argue why it's complete nonsense.

There are a number of things that people find universally scary: spiders, the dark, sudden violence, enclosed spaces, clowns... the list goes on. But setting out to scare someone without any deeper intent is something of a lost cause.

Every one of the iconic genres of horror exists because there is some attachment it has to the cultural paradigm. Haunted house films threaten the safety of the family home with old world superstitions, slasher films evoke fears of your neighbors being serial killers, and possession films are often about the uncomfortable divide between old world religions and gross human anatomy. Again, the list goes on and on. These sub-genres are all linked to how we, as human beings, experience fear for real and imagined threats to our way of life.

A film that scares you with loud noises and freaky images may terrify you in the moment, but will it stick with you if what you've seen has no connection - implicit or explicit - to real dangers that exist in the world? For instance: would we find Alien as disturbing if it didn't have all the bizarre sexual imagery?

All horror films are escapist, but the films only really stick with you if they are anchored by real human horrors.