Who is scared of Michael Myers? (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2022 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies, grade: 2,0, University of Hannover (Englisches Seminar), course: Films and Remakes, language: English, abstract: Analysis of the depiction of violence in the original Halloween movie by John Carpenter as well as its 2007 remake by Rob Zombie. Analysis of the "Remake logic".

John Carpenter's Halloween from 1978 is the 17th scariest horror movie of all time. At least according to the 'Science of scares' study conducted by the website Broadbandchoices.co.uk in 2021. The results are based on the average heart rate viewers exhibited during the screening of different horror movies. Whether this indicator serves as a reliable source for actually determining the fear factor of movies is questionable, to say the least. Likewise, scientists and scholars, psychologists and philosophers have been arguing for a long time about what induces fear in the viewer while watching horror movies (and why one should even want to consume these films at all then). Theories range from ones that claim we simply feel empathy and sympathy towards the characters in the movie (e.g., Plantinga 2009) to ones that propose that the viewing experience itself is the scary feature (Hanich 2014). Yet others, mainly psychological approaches, contend that there is a certain level of enjoyment to be had from experiencing fear while knowing there is no actual threat present (Nummenmaa 2021). Whatever the actual explanation might be (perhaps all of them are true to an extent), the discussion surrounding the topic itself serves to illustrate one of the key functions of the horror movie. To make its viewers feel afraid. While there are a multitude of ways to achieve this, one only needs to consider the vast array of different genres of horror, from gory slasher flicks to supernatural and paranormal horror, the ultimate goal can be seen as the evocation of fear.