ABSTRACT
Like dialogue, a horror film’s ‘sense of place’ (including location, season, time of day and weather) accomplishes many things. It heightens mood (in particular, the steady build of tension). It creates obstacles, both exterior and interior. And ‘landscape’ can paint in real-life details of a specific historical moment – like the “War of the Cities” during the Iran–Iraq War (1985), which serves as the backdrop to the Persian-language horror film Under the Shadow.
Horror film locations have shifted over time, from the Gothic-influenced vistas of early silents (like the decaying castle in 1922’s Nosferatu), to the sun-lit suburban lawns of the present day, in Get Out (2017). What links past and present locales is the way in which they (subtly or boldly) de-stabilize our sense of the ‘real’ – spectacularly, for example, in Get Out, when the film’s protagonist is hypnotized and suddenly finds himself falling into “the Sunken Place”, an inescapable pit of endless darkness.
In horror movies, protagonists’ journeys often conclude in a frightening place – a location they have to get to, to reach some ultimate revelation.
