Wasteland: World War I and the Origins of Horror

In humans there is a drive toward the frightening—it has deep roots in culture. However, horror in fiction and cinema began, as one of the consequences of the First World War—the catastrophe that had never happened in human history—shows W. Scott Poole. War forced an entire generation to face death head-on: Fritz Lang survived, but returned with thoughts about the nature of evil; dead people appeared even in the hospital for Siegfried Sassoon; Otto Dix’s paintings became one of the most naturalistic and horrifying visualizations of the horrors of war; Sigmund Freud wrote the immortal “The Uncanny” in 1919. Horror became not catharsis, but repetition; not entertainment, but something like a guide to a new normality. Shells, bullets, gases, and other technological achievements turn bodies into formless shells—still material and organic, yet inspiring almost Hades-like dread. Soldiers rise from graves and accuse ordinary people of knowing nothing about the war sacrifice that has been made. A vampire creates a space of “great death.” In every horror film, in every horror story, in every computer game of this genre, the ghosts of the First World War frolic and tickle our nerves—ghosts living right on the edge of our consciousness.