""To learn what we fear is to learn who we are," Guillermo del Toro wrote last week, in an essay for The Atlantic about Mary Shelley's eternally spooky novel Frankenstein. The director, who just released a film adaptation of the classic, has made a career of investigating the depths of horror, which he considers "one of the last refuges of spirituality in our materialistic world.""
""Fear is more or less universal; it helps us avoid genuine peril. But it's frequently surprising, as my colleague Sophie Gilbert wrote this week. Reflecting on a new book about 1970s horror films such as Rosemary's Baby, she notes that "in feeling out what really scares us, horror often connects with its cultural moment by accident." Terror is also highly idiosyncratic.""
"Deputy editor Jane Kim picked one of the most surprising films, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, because it taught her that cartoon characters can be mortal too. It was "the first time," she wrote, "that I saw a film's form-in this case, the mixed-media approach that makes the toons' vulnerability so clear-completely transform my emotional response to a story.""
Fear can function as a spiritual refuge within a materialistic world and deserves elevation as a powerful emotion. Fear is largely universal and helps people avoid genuine peril, yet it often surprises by reflecting cultural anxieties inadvertently. Horror across eras, including 1970s films like Rosemary's Baby, demonstrates how genre work can connect with its moment by accident. Individual reactions to fear are idiosyncratic; childhood encounters with films can produce lasting terror or existential dread, as exemplified by responses to Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Adam Sandler's Click. Horror films such as Saw, Scream, and The Blair Witch Project continue to provoke varied personal responses.
Read at The Atlantic
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