Why are audiences drawn to horror films? Previous answers to that question have included everything from a need to experience fear to a hunger for psychotherapy. This critical text proposes that the horror film's primary purpose is to present monsters, best understood as deformed and destructive beings. These monsters satisfy the audience's desire to know these beings, in particular those beings too fantastic and dangerous to know in real life. The text illuminates many aspects of the horror film genre, including epistemology, ethics, evaluation, history, monster taxonomy, and filmmaking techniques.
- ISBN10 1283020939
- ISBN13 9781283020930
- Publish Date 16 May 2011 (first published 31 March 2011)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 11 February 2015
- Publish Country US
- Imprint McFarland & Company
- Format eBook
- Language English