Horror films usually play on the emotions of the audience to influence terror and fear upon the viewer. General themes include death,horrific injuries,mental illness and other criminal acts. Horror films usually have a sub genre within the genre. These normally include murder mysteries,torture or a serial killer. Horror films started around the  1890's in france with films such as "the house of the devil". Horror films were popularized in America in the 1930's by universal studios with films like Dracula and Frankenstein. Films that inspired our ideas were things such as Scream because of the masked killer idea, Halloween because of the idea of a serial killer and also Nightmare on Elm street because of the mystery Enigma.