Pain in the Horror Film
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Countless horror films have been produced over the last century. The genre is consistently popular among the young, and consistently despised by the establishment. The MPAA gives out R rating after R rating, in an effort to put the genre down, and yet films like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer continue to flourish. Very rarely does a horror film get even a mediocre review by a major film critic, and yet Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees will be facing off in what will be the eighteenth film to feature either of them. Such longevity does not come without financial success, and financial success does not come without popularity.
However, horror is exceedingly complex, and can be divided into countless subgenres. Some of these subgenres are far less popular in the mainstream, regardless of the expert craftsmanship apparent in the films themselves. One of these subgenres could be defined, quite simply, as Pain.
Most horror movies use the concept of pain extensively. Every murder or injury in every horror movie ever made is using the thought of pain to make the audience cringe...