Horror as a genre has been around in film since the beginning of narrative movies. Often early horror movies were inspired by or outright adaptations of horror novels. Horror literature also dates back... arguably, since early literature... depending on what culture you’re looking at. It’s generally agreed that Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764) created Gothic horror.
But ghosts and monsters way pre-date that, look to Shakespear, go way farther to the Iliad and the Odyssey, Arthurian legends, Chinese mythology, ect. There are depictions of ‘monsters’, the underworld, frightening antagonists and stories. Though read today, most don’t read as particularly frightening and often were more ‘action’ based - especially in Greek mythology. Horror stories are just that, regardless of the medium through which they are being told, they are stories. They date all the way back to oral storytelling. Storytelling began orally as a way to disseminate culture and rules to each other. Horror Stories in their most basic function are morality tales. Don’t do this or else...! Beware of that or else...! If you do that, be careful, because...! For instance vagina dentata, which the film Teeth (2007) explores, is an old cautionary tale. It was told as a warning to young boys to ensure they wouldn’t go around having intercourse with random women... or assault anyone. Or Red Riding Hood is a famous cautionary tale warning young girls about not speaking to strangers. Every episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark and every Goosebumps had a moral in it... though like the Grimm Fairy Tales, those stories are for kids. I think a modern version of this would be all the movies warning people about placing too much faith and dependence in technology...
Eventually storytelling became more for entertainment, then for monetary value. Not to say films don’t have artistic and cultural value... some do more than others. More to the point horror stories - I think more than any other genre - have evolved the most and are the most culturally different. Of course different cultures, and time periods have a very different relationship to what ‘horror’ is. Horror is meant to frighten and repulse audiences. What situations elicit fear and disgust are heavily influenced by culture and society. And, those things change over time. Some look at the idea of ghosts as ‘scary’ and automatically malevolent, while other cultures and periods see them as a positive sign that an afterlife exists. Some have both good and bad ghost stories. As an example. Or demon possession stories tend to be more frightening to people who were raised in various religions compared to people who weren’t. Because, it might seem more plausible and/or realistic to them. Another example is violence, more to the point gore. In modern times most cultures look at gore as something repulsive and scary. But! If we go back historically humanity’s relationship to violence + gore has changed dramatically. Now we have hospitals, penicillin, disinfectant, we don’t do public executions, or religious sacrifices, if you break a law you get arrested and go to prison... no limbs are removed, no one is branded, or otherwise mutilated. The list goes on. There are entire museums dedicated to historically used torture devices. Comparatively, we rarely see truly horrible bloody situations... unless it’s on TV. And, even the ones we do generally aren’t as bad as the ones of the past. We’re more ‘civilized’ now... or like to think so. Look at the Grand Guignol Theatre in Paris, which held realistic or ‘naturalism’ performances of violent shows. But the theater’s attendance dropped off considerably in the mid-twentieth century. citing that after the World Wars, people became increasingly disinterested in realistic depictions of violence. After the horrible, bloody wars... audiences wanted escapism not naturalism.
There are ebbs and flows in the popularity of horror. As I’m sure there are within individuals - not just culturally. I haven’t looked at the numbers but I wouldn’t be surprised if horror changed after 9/11. For me personally sometimes I go through months of binging horror films and other times I just really need an 80’s sword and sandals flick to laugh at. Remember: Horror stories are cautionary tales, morality stories, they are warnings. But what people consider to be horror has changed over centuries of storytelling and is shaped by one’s culture... and of course personal fears. Fuck clowns! Am I right!?! I’m right! Anything can be made scary! Often horror deals in a ‘fear of the new or different’, (people, travel, places, technology, death, birth, change). But, sometimes the most terrifying things are the subversions safe of spaces. The known can be turned against you... so be careful.
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