Wes Craven said that there was an ''optimism'' in horror
"There are very few horror stories in which evil isn’t confronted and vanquished," said the acclaimed director.
Though plenty of people shy away from the darker and more frightening parts of life, Wes Craven gravitated toward them. The director became well known in the horror genre for films like The Last House on the Left (1972) and Swamp Thing (1982).
During an interview, Craven explained that, in reality, he didn’t see horror as something terrifying. Rather, the director saw value in the genre.
“We have a real need to talk about scary subjects,” Craven said during an interview with Knight-Ridder Newspapers. “Fables, every mythology, and fairy tales are full of scary things…For one thing, people don’t realize what an optimistic genre horror is,” said Craven. “It’s full of optimism. There are very few horror stories in which evil isn’t confronted and vanquished. So much of the genre is about optimistic heroes overcoming evil.”
While humor and horror seem to lie on opposite ends of the spectrum to most, Craven argued that the two classifications were far more similar than many believed.
“I could have ended up in comedy just as easily as in horror,” said the director. “In fact, there’s humor running through every one of the horror films. There really is a very thin line between humor and horror. They both are essentially things that make us uncomfortable.”
Related
