One of the main reasons I’ve come to love horror movies is that, for all of their lowbrow pleasures, they so often are high art. Horror directors play with style, form, and technique with a freedom and fervor you don’t find as consistently in other genres.
I think part of that has to do with budgets. Horror films are famously low-budget affairs, which benefits them in a couple of ways. First, it forces filmmakers to innovate, whether it’s using practical effects or utilizing camera movement and editing to generate suspense. The most famous example is probably Jaws, in which Steven Spielberg came up with his shark’s-eye view because his mechanical shark wasn’t working.
Meet Me In Montauk 