What is horror?

[BookZombie]

I thought we might have a nice debate on what horror is here instead of taking it int he best 100 horror book thread. Now let me start by saying that I think this is perhaps a question where there are no correct answer.

I use the definition that horror have to be made to be scary. Just something horrible happening do not count, that is why you have have a horror book where no one dies, and a war story book with a death toll of thousands and one is horror and the other is not. However this is not a definition which is absolute, as there are many catastrophe movies which I would not call horror, even if they are made to make you scared.

So what makes something horror and another thing not?

[Fearonsarms]

This is to difficult for me to answer as fully as I'd like right now but horror to me scares me or is meant to scare me. I find giving things a label limits them and adds rules. And it is in the best of horror that you find rules being broken as to what a genre is expected to do. For this reason I find a lot of thrillers, war movies and sci fi etc to be scary and therefore "horror". I find that a lot of my fave movies are labelled horror so am attracted to that label. For me a non horror film doesn't scare you and isnt meant to. This does mean I consider a lot of things horror. For example a lot of people consider what they see on the news as horror. You also get more specific labels like supernatural horror, slashers, pyschological horror etc therefore we rely mostly on labels but they are usually defined by example. Difficult topic this it could really go anywhere as it opens all sorts of other questions about how horror has been defined through the ages.

[wufongtan.]

I was reading a review of the movie "The Rite". He said that this is a true horror film, Something that hasn't been made in a while. Which made me think. He is right. There hasn't been a really good horror movie made for ages. There has been plenty of shock or scare movies. And by scare i mean, make people do little jump etc. Not truly a horror though.
Like alien. That was a horror movie. But aliens was a fright movie. Exorcist was a horror. But the sequels were more fright movies. I think the closest they have come to making a true horror movie, were the paranormal activities series. I know they weren't the scariest of movies. But they put up that atmosphere where people are facing something terrible without a knowing what to do or how to protect themselves. I don't know it might be down to personal taste and what each individual sees as horrifying. For me that chase sence at the start of 28 weeks later was excellent.

[TheWickerFan]

I don't think a story has to scare you to be considered "horror". There are plenty of horror stories that were simply haunting or disturbing, and I think they certainly qualify as "horror".

[BookZombie]

I to find that giving this to hard and fast genres can be limiting. I tend to go by topics instead of genres, I like movies and books about the supernatural so I have things from Care Bears to Hellraiser in my collection. However for a site like this perhaps at least a vague idea of what the category of horror is might be useful, though if one stick to it to closely it will definitely limit.

To me what is horror lies in the intent, was it the intent of the creators of said book, movie, game or whatever to scare you, or produce a sort of uneasy mood? I was terrified as a kid by a My Little Pony episode named Crunch The Rockdog where a giant dog made out of rock runs around turning everyone to stone. However I would not consider it to be horror. I however was not scared by Dracula as I was to busy dreaming of being in his arms and really there are few horror movies that scare me, so I look at intent, is this product intended to scare you, in which case it is horror to me.

Like alien. That was a horror movie. But aliens was a fright movie. Exorcist was a horror. But the sequels were more fright movies.

What is the difference between horror and fright, are that not just two words for the same thing. Please pardon my imperfect English here but I have never heard of this distinction could you please tell me a bit more about it?