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.

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.

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.

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.