What was the first horror movie?

Every genre of film has its starting point. For comedy, it was 1895’s L’Arroseur Arrosé (The Sprinkler Sprinkled). In 1901, Fire! was the first drama (or at least the first to string together a series of shots into a narrative). The first surviving animated film came in 1906, with Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. 1920 saw actor Douglas Fairbanks take on the role of the iconic hero Zorro in The Mark of Zorro, the first film of the superhero genre. The genesis of the horror film would fall to a three-minute film released in 1896: Le Manoir du Diable, aka The House of the Devil, followed shortly afterward by two other prominent “firsts” in the horror genre: Dante’s Inferno, the first feature-length horror film, and The Terror, the first “all-talking” horror feature. When looking back over the horror genre’s 128-year history, it’s incredible to see how a three-minute clip gave way to the likes of Dario Argento, Wes Craven, Jennifer Kent, and Jordan Peele.