Horror film conventions

Paradigms
these are a set of conventions that horror films use. They are quite like guidelines to what a horror film is and what it contains. For example the last girl theory  this is where the last person to survive is usually female. Near enough every film follows this convention or other conventions.

Examples:
“Psycho”- Psychological
“The shining”- Psychological
“The exorcist”- Religious
“Wolf creek” – True story
“The decent”- Monster/Gore

Horror films are designed to Frighten and panic people as well as causing dread and unhinging our worse fears:

• Nightmares
• Alienation
• Revulsions
• Terror of the unknown
• Loss of identity
• Fear of sexuality   

Characters:
 

·         With horror films there is always a lead character that will most likely survive at the end, this mostly collides with the final girl theory, which entails that the virgin or pure women/girl survives and escapes the killer where as her friend is usually a promiscuous girl who is killed off first.

·         The Killer always has a trademark characteristic in the way in which he kills, weather it being a certain type of weapon or something he is wearing that signifies that he is the killer.

·         The outcome is always that the good person survives/ or defeats the bad guy.

Props and weapons:

With every horror film there is always one significant weapon and people can usually guess what the film is by the weapon that is used!

• A knife is the most used weapon in horror films and is seen in near enough every slasher movie. 
• We also see a lot of weapons that aren’t normally associated with violence and death such as chainsaws and meat hooks this created a completely different type of horror which created gore and lots of blood, the main film we would associate this with would be Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
• The mind is also another weapon that is used and this is probably one of the scariest weapons as it can play with your mind as well while watching a film! And with this sort of weapon there are not limits of what can happen!
• Teeth: when we see this weapon we often associate this with the “creature of the night” or vampires.

Setting/Location:
The location of a horror movie can make or break a movie, with horror films we usually notice that the location is very secluded and in the middle of nowhere.  We also see locations such as:

·         House: when a house is used in a film, there is most likely to be no one in expect the one person being targeted! Houses are mostly used in slasher films as these films are mostly related to teenage girls at home alone! We also

·         The great outdoors:  This could mean anything from the desert to the woods this is a great location for making someone feel alone and secluded! We can see this location used in such films like the Blair witch project and hills have eyes.