Modern Horror Thrillers: A Traumatic and Linguistic Study of the Movies The Little Stranger and The Boy

Abstract

Emerging as an exhilarating genre in the current film industry, horror thrillers are a new genre alongside science fiction. These genre forms captivate the audience because they offer a brief but exhilarating break from daily life and serve as an escape from reality. In these films, William Brent Bell and Lenny Abrahamson, directors of The Boy and The Little Stranger, respectively, demonstrated the modern horror thriller technique. This research intends to demonstrate how splendidly traumatic events are utilised in contemporary films, along with the ideal discourse change in those people who are suffering from mental trauma, which has inspired the current interest in horror thrillers. This study was based on two perspectives: the first was the destructive power of trauma and its impact on one’s language, which can ruin or bring about disaster in one's life, and the second was how the film industry makes use of this trauma for the commercial success of horror films. In both of these films, horror is portrayed through unusual settings and occurrences. Through discourse analysis and descriptive methods, this study can conclude with the idea that conventional belief in spirits and other supernatural beings was irreparably damaged in today’s films. These films may be compelled to depict the reality that each individual's suffering induces fear, resulting in the emergence of fantastical, eerie concepts and a change in their language.