Supernatural Horror

• Supernatural-Horror film is a sub-genre of a broad genre of horror that includes ghosts, demons, or other illustrations of supernatural occurrences. Regularly, Supernatural-Horror films combine elements of religion into the plot.

• Common themes in Supernatural-Horror films include the afterlife, the devil, and demonic possession. Unlike Religious Thrillers, Supernatural-Horror films are not limited to specific religious elements and can contain more grisly and gruesome violence.

• The first bits of supernatural events appeared in a few of the silent short films created by a film pioneer named Georges Méliès in the late 1890s, the best known being Le Manoir du Diable, which is sometimes credited as being the first horror film.

• Supernatural horror came from from folklore and religious traditions including death, the afterlife, the demonic and evil and the principle of evil embedded in the devil.

• These were shown in stories of witches, vampires, werewolves and ghosts. In the eighteenth century, it was Gothic horror that drew on these sources producing the works of “Vathek” (1786) by William Beckford, “The Mysteries of Udolpho” (1794). “The Italian” (1797) by Anne Radcliffe and “The Monk” (1796) by Mattew Lewis.

• Horror fiction of this era was mainly written by women and marketed at a female audience. The typical scenario of the stories consisted of a female protagonist being menaced and tormented by fiends in a gloomy castle. Fast forwarding to Supernatural horror of today, using a female as the main character remains a convention of the genre.