Features of Horror films

Conventions of Horror films

• Normally set in isolated areas at night time, as there are very few people around, and makes the victims more vulnerable.
• Low lighting effects helps build suspense and makes it harder to see everything that's going on.
• Creepy children and clowns are often used as they are usually seen as happy and playful but are instead evil killers.
• red and black are often colours used in horror films as they portray evil and blood.
• victims are usually teenagers, who are often female and killed off one at a time leaving the main protagonist alone
• Antagonists are usually not fully seen until the middle or end of a film building suspense in the audience as they do not know who the bad guy is.
• Stereotypical 'blonde' girls are often seen, they are usually killed off first and are seen as stupid.
• Many modern horror films such as Paranormal activity use found-footage camera work, to make the audience get into the movie more and make it seem more realistic.

Sub-genres of Horror:

• Slasher, usually revolves around a psychopathic serial killer, that stalks and murders his victims in very violent ways, with a lot of screen time for the murder to take place, an example of this is Halloween
• Supernatural, usually involves demons and ghosts, and a religious elements and can include gruesome violence such as in The Ring.
• Zombie, usually revolves around a group of survivors struggling to survive against hordes of zombies like in 28 days later.
• Monster, is based on the 'experiment gone wrong' or alien encounters with the main protagonist normally ending up saving the world like in Aliens
• Comedy, usually scares audiences but also has comedic elements to it, they can also spoof other horror films, like in the Scary movie series