Piecing Together Horror: Peeling Back a Century of Screams is a non-fiction book detailing the history of horror within film. A reverse chronological timeline starting in the 2020s and trailing back to 1920s horror pictures. This book was my final project for my MA in visual communication and I had three months to research and design a final project.
The book features 92 films, all covered without spoilers, whilst detailing what elements make the film stand out as horror achievements but now that I can work on the book outside of university, I aim to cover 101 films in a way to match the trend within the horror market currently. Each page features my own writing and perception of the film to ensure this was a very personal project and no other opinions on the movies clouded my judgement.
The running theme of the book was the imagery of a man wrapped in newspaper - or as I like to call him; The Storyteller. His presentation is a play on old horror characters synonymous with the Universal Monsters. The Mummy and The Invisible Man were big inspirations for the mask and visuals of unravelling his face over time. Meanwhile, the newspaper clippings across his face were practically added using PVA glue onto a masking tape mask and tie into the title of the book. The reader is taking a journey, 'peeling back' how horror has evolved and changed in public opinion. What better way to track this change than to involve newspaper clippings? I used public resources such as Ancestry to track down the older movies and then current popular newspapers like The New York Times and edited screenshots of headlines.
The goal of this project is to publish the book by the end of 2025. New horror fans can use this book like a watchlist for films they may have not considered and experienced fans can compare their own interpretations of films with my own and indulge in the eerie theme of the book.
Below are some examples of pages, full prints of The Storyteller as well as myself, the author, with a physical copy of the book.
