Original Projects of Gavin Anderson

Horror Cinema

From my earliest memories, I have had a fascination with Horror movies. I would consume anything involving Horror movies that I could. As a child, I was limited to what I could watch and therefore was only able to watch very tame movies aimed more towards children. Then my teenage years hit and I became infatuated, like pretty much any other teenager, with slasher movies. Towards the end of my teenage years, however, a noticeable change in my tastes began to develop. I became to adore classic horror films much more than anything made after the 1970's. This is not to say that I don't enjoy films made after this time period, but I absolutely love the more psychological and more nuanced methods used by the classic films. It is this love for the media that has had such a profound effect on me that I decided to make a database on the top 10 horror films of each decade starting from the 1920's to today. I categorized the films based on titles, director, run times, decade released, lead roles, and genre within the horror field.

From this, I made several graphs sorting out my findings.

Decade vs Genre 2000's 2010's 1940's 1970's 1980's 1990's 1930's 1920's 1950's 1960's Zombie Anthology Apocalyptic Drama Comedy Gothic Monster Found Footage Drama Science Fiction Psychological Crime Monster Comedy Comedy Drama Anthology Monster Science Fiction Gothic Science Fiction Zombie Psychological Body Horror Slasher Naural Gothic Demonic Science Fiction Comedy Body Horror Psychological Comedy Sadist Horror Body Horror Monster Apocalyptic Drama Psychological Slasher Fantasy Monster Drama Body Horror Science Fiction Crime Surreal Fantasy Monster Crime Gothic Drama Monster Science Fiction Crime Drama Drama Zombie Monster Psychological Demonic Natural Horror Gothic Ghost

From this graph, you can tell that decades favored certain Genres over others. It is interesting to see how as the decades move forward, the predominant genres that stand above the others is Psychological, Comedy, and Science Fiction. Perhaps this is due to the fact that so many people have become desensitized to the physical horror seen early on with the Monster movies that were so popular during the 1920's up until the 1960's. 

Director Frequency 

This chart represents the amount of times these directors appear on the list. The bigger the circle, the more space on the list the director takes up. The colors represent the decades that the directors were active in with the colors blending if they were active across multiple decades.
Danny Boyle John Krasinski Charles Barton Ridley Scott James Cameron John Landis Sam Raimi Joe Cornish Takashi Miike James Whale Robert Wiene Jacques Torneur Jack Arnold George Romero Peter Jackson Alberto Cavalcanti Dario Argento Fritz Lang Nicoles Roeg Tod Browning George Melford David Lynch Georges Franju F. W. Marnau Roy William Neill Robert Rodriguez Jordan Peele Ishirô Honda Jeremy Saulnier Joe Dante John Carpenter Terence Fisher André De Toth William Castle Benjamin Christensen Francis Lawrence Neil Jordan Don Siegel Philip Kaufman Erle C. Kenton Mark Robson Andres Muschietti David Robert Mitchell Adrian Lyne Steven Spielberg Tomas Alfredson Kaneto Shindô John McTieran Alfred Hitchcock Stuart Gordon Roman Polanski Wes Craven Edgar Wright Mervyn LeRoy Robert Wise Drew Goddard Guillermo del Torro William Friedkin Jean Epstein Paul Wegener Joon-ho Bong Jack Clayton Karl Freund Juan Antonio Bayona Rupert Julian Albert Lewin Stanley Kubrick Christian Nyby Lewis Allen George Waggner Ron Underwood Eli Craig Jonathan Glazer Carl Theodor Dreyer David Cronenberg Robert Aldrich Taika Waititi Ruben Fleischer Juame Balagueró
Initially, I believed that the only people that would be truly noticeable would have been Alfred Hitchcock, Sam Raimi, and John Carpenter. I was pleasantly surprised to see the likes of Jacques Torneur, James Whale, and Tod Browning being represented on the list seeing that they are not nearly as well discussed as the others.

Run Time Perspectives

This chart represents the run times that the genres fall into.
ZombieDramaComedyScience FictionSadist HorrorMonsterSurreal Body HorrorAnthologyPsychologicalFantasyCrimeSlasherApocalypticNauralDemonicGothicNatural HorrorGhostFound Footage11312696957388647512311512911063134839781851069910596898680117137889880115107778171109871081157579951047174108826913581103631197370729789709510319112611010397113109105142114116110919490831229111110195124136122981061121051079911910075
It seems like the more abstract the concepts for films are, the longer the movie runs. This is most likely due to the focus on building tension rather than directly showing the audience the threat as you can see how the Psychological, Gothic, and Fantasy genres run disproportionately longer than the other genres

Conclusion

I loved working on this project and plan on continuing my research into the history of this subject. I hope I have sparked your interest into not only watching these movies but also learning more about them, the directors, their time periods, and respective genres.

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