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Influences On Society
Horror films’ evolution throughout the years has given society a new approach to resourcefully utilize their benefits. The horror film style has changed over time, but in 1996 “Scream” set off a “chain of copycats” leading to a new variety of teenage, horror movies. This new approach to horror films began to gradually earn more and more income as seen in the progress of “Scream” movies; the first movie earned six million and the third movie earned one-hundred and one million. The importance that horror films have gained in the public and producers’ eyes is one obvious effect on our society. Horror films’ money expansion is only the first sign of the influences of horror flicks. The role of women and how women see themselves in the movie industry has been altered by the horror genre. In early times horror films such as My Bloody Valentine (1981), Halloween (1978), and Friday the 13th (1980) pertained mostly to a male audience in order to “feed the fantasies of young men. It’s main focus was to express the fear of women and show them as monsters; however, this ideal is no longer prevalent in horror films. Women have become not only the main audience and fans of horror films but also the main protagonists of contemporary horror films. The horror industry is producing more and more movies with the main protagonist being a female and having to evolve into a stronger person in order to overcome some obstacle. This main theme has drawn a larger audience of women movie-goers to the theaters in modern times than ever historically recorded. Movie makers also go as far as to integrate women relatable topics such as pregnancy, motherhood, lesbian relationships, and babysitting jobs, into their films in order to gain even more female oriented audiences. The interpretation of women in their community is not however the only social group that has been altered by horror films. Adolescents presence in the horror genre as presenting false good over a hidden demonic nature has weakened the relationship between adult and child. The common thought toward children is to love, protect, and adore, yet over the years the rate of births and thus children has been declining. According to an article in the Huffington Post by Marilynn Marchione, this last century as the lowest rate of child births ever recorded. The influence of horror is not the only factor that has pushed society to these children-adult relationships, although it can be accepted as one of the many causes of this decline.

A more in depth idea on how the genre of horror impacts the everyday is the thoughts that can intrude the watchers mind from the films that they sit in front of for hours. Society is a place with quotas, terms, and rules that we all abide by and it is the horror movies that break all these norms. The horror films “evoke elements of the real that have not been assimilated into a culture." The story usually possess elements that seem animal to our human ways and can spark new conceptions that normally would not have been imagined.

Influences Internationally
Horror is just one genre of movies, yet the influences that it presents to the international community are large. Firstly they tend to be a vessel for showing eras of audiences issues across the globe visually and in the most affective manner. Jeanne Hall, a film theorist, agrees with the use of horror films in easing the process of understanding issues by making use of their optical elements. The use of horror films to help audiences understand international historical events prior is utilized for example to show the horridness of the Vietnam war, the Holocaust and the worldwide AIDS epidemic. However, horror movies do not always present positive endings. In fact in many occurrences the manipulation of horror presents cultural definitions that are not accurate, yet set an example to which a person relates to that specific cultural from then on in their life. The visual interpretations of a films can be lost in the translation of their elements from one culture to another like in the adaptation of the Japanese film “Ringu” into the American film “The Ring”. The cultural components from Japan were slowly “siphoned away” to make the film more relatable to an American audience. This deterioration that can occur in an international remake happens by the over-presenting of negative cultural assumptions that, as time passes, sets a common ideal about that particular culture in each individual. Holm discussion of the Ringu remakes presents this idea by stating, “It is, instead, to note that he Ring films make use of an untheorized notion of Japan... that seek to directly represent the country.”