Spooky movies balance fun and fright

(CNN) - As Halloween approaches, fan search for fear-filled films. Humor and horror were the perfect partners in 2009.

Woody Harrelson's new film "Zombieland" has already taken more than $70 million at the box office. Zombies may be undead, it seems, but they are neither unfunny nor unprofitable.

"Jennifer's Body" finds vampires drinking deeply from the lighter side of death. It is Diablo Cody's first film since winning a screenwriting Oscar for the comedy for the comedy "Juno." Megan Fox is the aforementioned body, as a cheerleader whose taste in boys becomes somewhat bloody.

"They're extreme emotions I think," said Megan Fox about her role. "It provokes an intense reaction from you - laughing or screaming - it gets the adrenaline going and so I think they're a perfect match. They're not put together enough from my point of view."

One of the biggest horror films at the box office this year is Sam Raimi's "Drag Me to Hell," which uses comedy to diffuse some of the scariest moments.

"I put those black humor moments in my horror films because they seem to be a natural fit," said Raimi. "Maybe because I can't face the horror straight and it's my way of dealing with it. But I've recently found that it helps me in the construction of my suspense sequences. Sometime when I'm building up a sequence of suspense, leading up to a scare where I think the audience knows that the scare is coming, instead I'll deliver a laugh there. And it releases the tension, allows the audience to come down a few notches of suspense tension and then I can start ratching it up even higher."

As director of the "Evil Dead" trilogy, Raimi is no stranger to a bloody blend of smiles and shocks. Another master of horror, Wes Craven, who introduced us to Freddie Krueger in "A Nightmare on Elm Street," directed the "Scream" franchise, which put fun and fright on an equal footing.

"Well, I think they're the same," said Craven. "I think a horror film is a dark joke. not in the sense of trivializing suffering, or death. but jokes are about things that make us uncomfortable, so they share many many constructive elements between the two. The fact is that the timing which is everything. and the building of that suspense in a way people can't predict is the same skill. across both of those."

Inevitably, the horror genre became ripe for parody as silliness overtook scariness in yet another lucrative film franchise, in the form of the "Scary Movie." With the success of "Zombieland," another "Scream" trilogy on the horizon and profitable remakes of 80s slasher film franchises continuing, there is reason for frightful filmmakers to hope they will be laughing all the way to the bank.