The ״Uncanny״ Effect in Modern Horror Movies

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"Get Out" was the first horror movie I ever saw. Until then I thought that the horror films is not for me, mainly because of the jump scares and the "bad" name of the genre as "simplistic and shallow." But after "Get out" I started exploring the genre and watched all the well-known movies of the genre.

During my film studies I learned about the history of cinema and understood, among other things, the strong connection between films and culture and history. Such as the dilemma of the chicken or the egg I wondered to myself whether the films reflected the mood of the place where they were created or create themselves the history. I realised that many of the horror films relate to history, for example, in my studies of the German Expressionist film stream and the theories about the film "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari."
Last year I also watched "Annihilation" and "hereditary" and began to notice a certain pattern in the way that contemporary horror films use elements of alienation to increase the anxiety and terror. Foreignness is not new in the genre; we tend to be afraid of the unknown and unfamiliar to us, and these films use it, but something in all of these films ("Get out", "Annihilation" and "hereditary") felt a little different to me.

I remembered that during my studies I also learned about the Uncanny Freudian concept of discomfort from something that could be familiar, but at the same time is foreign, and I began to think about the use of horror films to create this feeling.
I wanted to examine in this video essay the use of each of the films in this phenomenon. I discovered an interview of a hereditary creator Ari Aster who accurately describes how he wanted to make the stranger feel familiar and I read an article about "Get out" that describes this feeling but without using this term. And for me the horror in "Annihilation" comes from the fear of the familiar/stranger experience

I also discovered through my inquiry how each film used cinematic tools to create both narrative and cinematic expressing the sense of the "Uncanny" and I tried to bring it into my work in the examples I brought. I have learned from this how the use of this sense of discomfort can undermine conventions raises important questions about important issues such as racism, family and science.

My premise is that the use the Uncanny in the cinema and the horror genre in particular is not new but very much present in the horror films of recent years. I believe it helped the creators communicate their message and I think it will be interesting to see how the horror films of the next few years will use, if at all, this sense of "Uncanny". in my opinion the Uncanny has the ability to influence and have a stronger effect on the viewer than the presentation of monsters or creatures that, despite their unusual and frightening appearance, do not exist in reality. This is in contrast to the unusual and frightening sense of understanding that the horror films used in the “Uncanny” are much closer to real situations.

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