Horror is a genre that seeks to elicit fear and/or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often go in-depth with darker subjects and elements in the movie can include of course monsters, apocalyptic events, and religious beliefs. The entire purpose of making a horror film is to develop a terrifying atmosphere that puts the audience on edge and scares them. Watching a horror film gives us a certain stimulation, like a rollercoaster, these ironically can help relieve some of your stress and an. Horror also allows us to satisfy our curiosity about the dark side of the human psyche, obviously, we aren’t able to have such experiences that we see in movies, in our day-to-day lives. If we want this type of entertainment, how should we get it? A great suggestion would be horror films, specifically two films that I personally enjoyed, which were Annabelle: Creation and Saw. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which one is better!

Annabelle: Creation is a film that was released in 2017 and is the fourth installment in the conjuring universe, and depicts the Annabelle doll’s origin. In the film, a dollmaker and his wife grieve their young child named Annabelle who tragically passed away in a car accident. 12 years later, the couple opened their home to provide for a caregiver and 6 girls that were left homeless after their orphanage closed down. Soon things take a turn for the worst when one of the orphans decides to disobey the host Mr. Mullin (the dollmaker), and goes into their child’s bedroom and opens a closet in which they find a porcelain doll. This was the cause of multiple terrifying/haunted occurrences because opening that door had released a powerful demon. The entity begins to terrorize the children and goes on a hunt for a human soul. After “trapping the doll” back into the room where it was confined before, the movie ends by showing that the entity did in fact already take hold of one of the orphans and shows the girl being adopted by a new family. I enjoyed this movie because of its take on the paranormal which is a topic that I find very interesting.

My next top film, Saw, is a movie mainly focused on not so much the scary spiritual elements like ghosts and demons, but more on the gore aspect of horror. The movie Saw released in 2004, is the first installment of 9 movies. This movie is about a serial killer who is named the Jigsaw Killer, who gives morbid tests to his victim’s will to survive by putting them through hard decisions and deadly games where they must inflict great pain. One of the killer’s victims who happens to be a doctor knows who the perpetrator is because he in fact used to be a suspect in the Jigsaw murders. The film then shows five months prior to the doctor’s kidnapping, where he is interrogated, cleared by an alibi, and helps listen to a testimony of a woman who is the only known survivor of one of Jigsaw’s murders. After showing the victims turn on each other, the movie ends by showing one of the victims die while the other leaves without much repercussion. 

Out of these two movies, which would I say is the best? To answer this question, I would have to say it depends on your own personal

preference. If you want a suspense-filled movie about a horrifying entity that haunts children and is filled with plenty of jumpscares, I would suggest Annabelle: Creation. If you much rather have a movie filled with gore and mystery, then Saw is the way to go. Both also have many installments, Saw having 9 and Annabelle being in the conjuring universe having 8 films to enjoy.