Okay so a bit more detail on that:
– as stated in Aristotle Poetics, the aim of the tragedy is to create the catharsis, “a mix of terror and pity that purges the spectator from their passions”. Horror movies: make you feel compassion for the victims and horror for the crime while you can observe it from afar (and, often, cry and yell)
– what makes the tragic hero(ine) is their Hubris, aka pride that make them commit crimes in the eyes of the gods. More specifically, they forget theyre but simply human beings and try to act like gods, disrespecting sacred things. Horror movies will pretty often criminalize teenagers having sex, and uphold moral values for a specific ideology.
– the tragedy, as stated by Aristotle, must “show and not tell”. Horror movies use graphic violence or tension, but telling flatly “theres a murderer in this house” would completely kill it
– the importance of the mask. We all know comic and tragic masks (🎭) from Ancient Greece. One of the roles of the mask was to make obvious the role that the actor played, and to “idealize” it (aka: not an actor anymore but The Widow or something). And look at how many iconic horror movies protagonists wear masks – terrifying, almost abstract masks.
There are probably more examples, those are what came from the top of my head lmao
medusa-avenging-squad 