What exactly is a "horror film," or, more specifically, what exactly is horror? In what ways are our expectations different when we go to see a horror film than when we go to see a "western film" or a "science fiction film"? What is it that we hope to experience when we go to see a "horror film"?
Certainly, we expect to be "terrified," whatever that may be, or at least we are prepared to be "frightened" in some way; we expect the hair to rise on the back of our necks. But what is it that terrifies us, or "frightens" us, or, essentially, incites in us a sense of horror? Is it the presence of "horrible creatures" — however we may imagine them? Or is it the presence of ghosts, or other kinds of supernatural creatures, that frightens us? Certainly, the supernatural is present in all these experiences, and human beings generally fear the supernatural because things supernatural are considered hostile to human life. The fact that human beings fear the supernatural can be observed every Sunday; priests and ministers, for example, often exhort us to fear God. Yet God, ideally, is not hostile to human life.
Thus, some consideration of what horror is may help us to arrive at some tentative conclusion about the nature of horror. Tentatively, perhaps we can consider what horror does: Horror reaffirms the sacred, or Holy, through a formulaic plot in which human beings encounter the demonic, or Un-Holy. If there are Un-Holy beings, by implication, there are Holy beings. To test this tentative hypothesis, perhaps an application of it to classic horror stories would be helpful.
This hypothesis is certainly applicable to Dracula. The Count has a terrifying sense of the demonic about him, suggested superficially by his appearance. Yet religious artifacts such as the cross affect the Count (in fact, it has become a popular cultural cliché that to ward off a vampire, all one has to do is brandish a cross — even if the "cross" is no more than crossed forefingers).
