Many people love the feeling of being scared while watching movies and enjoy the adrenaline rush of uncertainty; not knowing what is going to happen next to their favorite characters. Horror movies trigger an emotional roller coaster for the audience and lets them escape reality, where there are many monsters to hunt while being in an unnerving atmosphere. 

Horror movies are very popular now, and there are many of these spooky movies to watch, but have you ever wondered how the first horror movies started off? The roots of the horror genre began in the early 1930s and first existed only in the United States, however, American gothic works were not made into films. 

Instead, American directors and producers moved to British gothic stories, and so American-British horror movies were created. The most famous gothic stories include Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dracula. The directors and producers recreated monsters from British gothics, and not American ones, which led to Hollywood studies shifting the origins away from the United States.

The famous Frankenstein story was first published way back in 1818 by Mary Shelley, then was first made as a film in 1931, but it changed the literary narrative completely to better entertain the audience, and keep them on their toes. Universal studios was the first main producer of horror movies, and their success began from their production of The Phantom of the Opera in 1925. 

Then the first production of Dracula (1931), the Mummy (1932), and The Invisible Man (1933) came out which made horror movies more well known. These very famous horror stories were produced not too long after Frankenstien came out, and were huge hits, as they were the first horror movies.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) is considered to be the birth of modern horror by many film critics because of how Hitchcock portrayed the characters and how well the plot was set up and created over time.

The scariest movie ever is The Exorcist (1931). It is constantly ranked one of the scariest movies ever, and has been voted as such by Rotten Tomatoes user rankings. Although The Exorcist is on the top, other films that have been close to the top are, The Shining, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Sinister.

Many people do have different opinions on what they think is scary for them, so everyone has a different point of view on it.  The first horror movie in history is Le Manoir du Diable, the english version is The House Of The Devil (1896). It has featured things such as supernatural imagery and trick shots, which set the stage for the genre’s development. 

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) was also a really scary movie. It just had another that recently came out in 2024 so last year. It was in theaters. 

There are so many horror movies and all of them have a different scare to them. Each one scares someone in a different way. They all have such different and fascinating histories that draws the audience towards it.