Horror Sub-genres

Horror Genre:

Horror is a genre that is in place to effectively elicit a negative emotional response from viewers, and it intends to play on typical fears of people. They are made to attempt to startle the viewer, make them jump and this is why the horror genre includes lots of blood conventionally, and supernatural elements occurring. They will also overlap into over genres for effect, with fantasy and thriller genres being predominant sub-genres inside horror.

Body Horror:This is a type of horror that occurs around the theme of graphic destruction or degeneration of the body. This basically means that during the film, characters can potentially disintegrate and decay because of possible diseases, mutation can occur and unnatural things can happen subsequently. Scientifically incorrect things can occur in body horror, as the primary effect is to graphically show disturbance in order to disturb and essentially ‘freak’ the viewer out.

Gothic Horror:

This will blend the ideological themes of horror, with the themes of romance in order to connote a dark, mysterious theme. It basically conveys a pleasing taste of horror, and it is extreme themes of romanticism that also include strong aspects of horror, although in a less bloody but more cultural way.

Demonic Horror:This sub-genre is intended to convey disequilibrium, and the ideology of good versus evil because of the unnatural forces in the world. This suggests that the world is uneven and horrible, because there are evil forces that undermine humanity, and the forces can remain as spiritual or they can generally take the form of demons and devils, with dark strong forces represented as binary opposites of what is associated with being normal and pure.

Japanese Horror:This horror sub-genre focuses on uniqueness and innovative storylines. It tends to usually convey psychological aspects of horror, with tension building rapidly and suspense gradually building through the film. Ghosts and poltergeists feature frequently during this sub-genre of horror, in an attempt to creep viewers, and they come from old folk-tale stories that are modernised.

Lovecraftian Horror:This horror emphasises the idea of unknown horror, and plays on this in order to connote mystery to the audience, and it mainly plays on the idea of the unknown instead of representing gore and shock. The ideas of helplessness and hopelessness are shown regularly through this sub-genre, detachment from what is normal, and isolation is depicted regularly.

Monster Horror:This is usually adapted from horror literature, with the combination of binary opposites coming together in order to evoke a sensation of both horror and terror from the audience. It will represent evil as a monster always, and this is the intention of using an unusual representation of what is impure, in order to primarily scare the viewers. Isolation is shown in the monstrous characters, but the idea of duality and darkness can be shown, ultimately resulting in monsters being created and adapted.

Psychological Horror:This is a sub-genre that deliberately relies on the flaws in characters and manipulating their fears and instability in order to build tension. It will play upon shade characteristics that characters will face, and this sub-genre will focus on the psychological aspects of inside the characters. Emotional feelings and personality types, and it will show the features of inhumane acts.

Slasher Horror:This is a sub-genre of horror films that can relate to thriller horror, and it always involves a mysterious person being a psychopathic killer, killing people in a strong, graphical manner with symbolic ideologies in the style of a knife and axe etc. It involves many strong acts of murder, the character will have their own personality that isn’t generally understood due to the way that they are twisted, and blood is an integral factor.

Space Goth Horror:This is a sub-genre that blends forms in order to relate to gothic horror and science fiction. It will capture the dark atmosphere, creating a dark supernatural element. It incorporates the elements of science fiction meaning that boundaries cannot be breached, and includes gothic horror for a dramatic sense of mystery.

Supernatural Horror:This is a fantasy combines elements from supernatural fiction and drama, and it will usually incorporate ghosts and paranormal topics. It isn’t strongly a part of the horror genre, but can include many of the conventions related. There are always unexplained aspects that make the film unbalanced, and it centres on things that cannot be explained in a simplistic way.