Horror genre

1. Conventions of the Horror genre
The purpose of horror films are to seek a negative emotion from the
audience. The horror film usually plays on the audience’s fears, these fears
spark the scared emotion, therefore, creation of horror films are to scare
and force fear from the audience.
The generic plot of a horror film involves, for example: a force of evil that
is either supernatural/paranormal or perhaps it could be the setting that is
the force of evil.
Horror films have become extremely popular with mostly age groups 16-24.
The macabre and the supernatural are frequent themes, and may overlap
with the fantasy, supernatural fiction and thriller genres.

2. The History of Horror Films
The first horror film was roughly 2 minutes long,
and was created by an imaginative French
filmmaker who was ‘Georges Melies’. The film
was titled ‘Le Manoir Du Diable’ (The Devil’s
Castle/The Haunted Castle) and was created in
the year 1896.
The Horror genre is one of the oldest genres
known.
From the early days, ghost stories and
shadows that were unknown created a sense
of fear.
Horror films reflected these stories and
opened the audience up to this sense of fear
and horror which they didn't actually have to
experience themselves.
The 2000’s marked the era of change for the horror
genre, as comedy crossovers began to be created. The
first comedy crossover to be created was ‘The Evil
Dead’ in 1981. However, after this was created few
hybrids of its kind were made until recent years where
comedic films such as ‘The Haunted House’ were
made. Comedy crossovers never disappointed.
In the 90’s there was a lack of films
produced that were seen as
frightening for the audience, for
example ‘Night of the living dead’
1991and ‘Scream’ 1996.
Monsters and other types of creatures
became widely used within horror
films, and due to people wanting to
create a more exciting and horrifying
monster, people were constantly
reinventing these monsters to see how
far they could push peoples level of
fear.
Texas chain saw massacre
(created in the 1970’s) was a
film that was prominent then,
and now. It is known for the
way in which it horrified it’s
audience.

3. Sub Genres
 Action Horror – The element of horror (a force of evil) combined with gunfights, frantic
chases, these are all conventions associated with the action genre. An example of this genre
is ‘The Purge – Election Year’
 Comedy Horror – A combination of the horror genre and comedy. A majority of Comedy
Horror is known as ‘black comedy’.
 Psychological Horror – This sub genre solely relies on the characters fears, guilt, beliefs,
eerie sound affects, relevant music, and sometimes emotional instability, the supernatural
and ghosts.
 Supernatural Horror -
 Gothic Horror -
 Science Fiction Horror – This is a genre which is known as a hybrid, as it is a combination
of sci-fi and the horror genre. This sort of genre involves characters such as, killer scientists
and aliens.
 Zombie Film – Centred around zombies and apocolapyses.

4. Codes and Conventions
 Horror films are usually located within desolate locations, such as: A house/cabin in the
woods/a quiet street, an abandoned house. These are the generic settings for a horror film,
however, in recent horror films, the setting is in realistic places to make the horror appear
more real and scarier for the audience.
 We are introduced to characters who we, as audience members learn to like, they then
become affected by danger, death or possession.
 Another common theme of the horror genre is that there is always a power cut, as soon as
something bad has happened. This means that the evil have more of an advantage over the
good people as they cannot see and this means that their escape is a lot harder for them to
do.
 In addition to the previous convention, the phone lines are always cut, meaning that the
people who are being hunted by the evil presence have no contact with the outside world for
help.
 A strange noise is heard and someone goes to investigate it, even though they are not sure
and are scared for what they might find.
 The most frequent convention is that the characters go and hide somewhere where the
audience know that they will be discovered by the evil presence. The character believes that
where they are hiding is a ‘safe place’ however, as audience members we know otherwise.
 The victim falls over. This happens all the time within horrors. We do not know what they
fall over, but they do anyway.
 If there is a vehicle that the characters attempt to escape in, it usually doesn’t start which
means that the character is unable to escape. This usually leads to their death, or increases
the amount of bodily harm that is inflicted upon them.
 The weather is usually very reflective of the mood. This has been one of the genres most
prominent conventions and has always been one ever since the horror genre had begun.