Horror filmmakers have been scaring the pants off of us since the earliest days of cinema. Back then, it was monsters and mummies and science experiments gone wrong doing the frightening; today, it can be anything from masked killers to sound-hating aliens to pop-up book characters to, well, US. But how do filmmakers use cinema to scare audiences? What tactics have they employed over the century to tickle our terror bone – and how have those tactics evolved? In our latest video essay, Rotten Tomatoes Editor Jacqueline Coley chronicles the history of horror in cinema, introducing us to the masters of the genre and describing their fiendish strategies. It’s a suspenseful journey that will take you from the original cinematic universe to the slasher phenomenon right through to today’s ambitious, expectation-subverting horror works – with pitstops at torture porn and Hitch along the way.

Watch Alfred Hitchcock at an AFI Master seminar here:    • Alfred Hitchcock On Mastering Cinemat...  

All titles available on FandangoNow and Vudu:
28 Days Later
2001: A Space Odyssey
78/52
Alien
Arachnophobia
Audition
The Babadook
The Black Cat
Black Christmas
The Blair Witch Project
The Cabin in the Woods
Candyman
Cat People
Child’s Play
The Conjuring
The Conjuring 2
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Cujo
The Descent
Don’t Breathe
Double Indemnity
Dracula
Exorcist III
The Evil Dead
Evil Dead (2010)
Final Destination
Frankenstein
Freaks
Friday the 13th 7
Gaslight
Get Out
The Green Inferno
The Grudge (2004)
Halloween (1978)
Halloween (2018)
Happy Death Day
Hellraiser
Hereditary
Hostel
House of Usher
House on Haunted Hill
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Insidious
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
The Invisible Man (2020)
The Invisible Man (1933)
The Invitation
IT
It Follows
I Walked with a Zombie
Jaws
Lights Out
Midsommar
Murders in the Rue Morgue
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Night of the Living Dead
Pan’s Labyrinth
Paranormal Activity
Poltergeist
Psycho
Pulp Fiction
A Quiet Place
Raw
Ready or Not
Rear Window
Relic
The Ring
Rosemary’s Baby
Saw
Scary Stories To Tell In the Dark
Scream
Scream 2
The Shining
The Silence of the Lambs
Sinister
The Sixth Sense
The Strangers
Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1978)
The Birds
The Mummy
The Witch
Trick ’r Treat
Tucker and Dale vs Evil
Us
Vertigo
The Wolf Man
You’re Next

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