(blogging article)

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”
(H.P.Lovercraft)

In the early 19th century, science fiction writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft tried to scare the reader with one of humanity’s oldest fears – the fear of the unknown. At that time, his works enjoyed little popularity due to their unusualness, but I suspect at that time they could really scare the readers, or at least give them a slight feeling of anxiety.

Later, Lovecraft’s writings gained their popularity by popularizing a new subgenre of horror called Lovecraft Horror. However, every year this genre turned from scary to simply fantastic. In the 20th and 21st centuries, a person was no longer so frightened by the unknown lurking deep in space. Now people are more afraid of the unknown lurking in the person himself or herself.

Nowadays, a movie or book becomes scarier or more alarming due to the presence of the “evil person” factor in it. It is enough just to look at the number of such works, where a person is one of the key antagonists. People are suddenly frightened by an image of a maniac, a cold-blooded killer, rather than creatures from distant stars.

Summing up, we can say that to bring a work in the genre of horror closer to the modern reader or viewer, it will be easier to refer to the motives of such a trope as “the horror in each of us.” Thus, you will connect the fictional world of your work with the present, bringing closer the possibility that something like this could happen in real life.

P.S.“If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!”
(H.P.Lovercraf)