Harry's Summer Work

Conventions of a horror movie

Horror films are unsettling movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, disgust and horror from viewers. Horrors also frequently overlap with the thriller genre. Horror movies have many different conventions that make them a horror film/something in common with the majority of all other horror films. Conventions of a horror film are almost characteristics of the horror genre. There are many of these conventions and I am going to name a few with in the different parts of these horror movies.

List of conventions of the horror genre

To start off, lets talk about the conventions within the ‘settings ‘of a horror movie. Settings play an important part in most movies and especially in a horror film as the setting can give you a sense of fear/spookiness or safety etc and there are many different conventions that go into the setting of a horror movie.

Settings

·   A place in which there is a dark history attached to the area e.g; abandoned houses, castles, hotels etc. Areas, which give a sense of being alone or connote isolation, so too give that fear that you don’t know what is around the corner. Dark streets, alleys, run down towns/ghost towns.

·        
Any place, which is known to be ‘dark’ so the woodlands, underground, cabins, asylums and even space stations, can be used if the horror is a ‘sci-fi’ horror.

Asylum

Dark alleyway

Characters play a very big part of the horror genre as well. Every horror has characters in certain types such as ‘the one who lives’, ‘the damsel in distress’ etc. All the character’s I am going to mention are involved in every horror movie, as they’re apparent in almost every movie of the horror genre.

Characters

·   Final girl - refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, also the last person left to tell the story of fighting of the killer.

·   A protagonist - who wins by changing, by undergoing an arc from one emotional condition to another, is a dramatic hero

·   Teenagers who are naive too the apparent danger and act as if they don’t care and get killed almost immediately. 

·   The main characters of a horror film are introduced as young and youthful, usually teenage kids who are an easy target due to their vulnerability. Usually a couple, athlete boyfriend and cheerleader girlfriend types.

·  Unsuccessful heroism- an unprotected victim and a superhuman killer who may not die successfully and come back in a sequel.

· Red Heroin – somebody you think is the killer

Teenager being killed off in scene

Themes also play a major role in a horror film as they’re what the story of the movie is based on. Here are just a selected few theme’s that are conventions to horror.

Themes

·       Good v Evil

·       Death

·       Hate

·       Suicide

·       Depression

·       Religion

·       A back-story that has made a good person turn bad

Bad Vs Good

There are many more conventions involved within ‘settings’, ‘characters’ and ‘themes’ but just to get a wider picture on the conventions of horror as a whole, lets talk about it overall.

Lets talk about near the start of a horror movie when the ‘hero’ first meets the ‘monster/villain’. The hero is generally shot using a high camera angle from the perspective of the villain looking down on them and this is done for a reason. The reason being so as too show the person the camera is on in a weak/vulnerable position so as if they villain is holding all the power over them. The villain is then, in reverse, shot in a low camera angle to show them as overpowering the person they’re looking over to make them seem as if they hold all the power. This is done so the audience gets fearful of the villain as if it’s making the audience feel belittled by him/her and this is done within all horror movies. However, towards the end of the majority of horror movies there is a shift and the camera angles reverse and change as the hero, who was belittled, gains more power and a stronghold over the villain. This is done to show them now holding more power over the villain and less of a fear of them than they did at the very start of the movie.

Dark colours are also used to create a sense of fear (such as Black and Red) and low-key lighting to emphasis the audience not knowing what is known, as you’re more afraid of what you don’t know than what you do know. The weapons used are also conventions, as they always tend to be a gun or a knife or any weapon that’ll cause a lot of pain to the receiver and not a quick, easy, pain free death. This can be seen as a close and personal death, so it’s as if a murderer done it.

Weapons like knifes are also conventions as they resemble human genital, so as if a knife is long and like a males genitals so it is like a rape that is often associated with horror.

The killers/villains are often conventions of a horror movie as they’re, most of the time, either a monster, zombie, ghost, psycho or a good person turned killer. So you’ll often not find these types of killers in any other film apart from horror.

Psyco, Zombie and Ghost

Horror movies fonts for their film text is also done in a certain way to make the audience aware that it is of the horror genre. There such thing called ‘Tikka and Booba’ with Tikka being sharp shaped geometric shapes and booba is curved edges and these are used in horror films. The text for the films heading will always be a tikka, so as if it’s sharp lettering like a knife and never a booba that would make you feel as if the film is happy with curved writing. This I done so the audience knows that the movie is not going to be a happy movie but rather a horror, by just looking at the text.

The order in which horror movies are structured are a convention as they’re all based with an Equilibrium then there is a disruption to that and they’ll try to attempt to repair it and it’ll end back with an equilibrium and this is in all (most) horror movies.




Three different horror films:

I am going to write some information on three different horror films and what they were based on and just some overall background on the films themselves.  

Too start off, let me talk about the 1980 movie ‘The Shining’:

The shining is a 1980 movie, taking the genre title of psychological horror film. It was produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick and starred such movies stars as Jack Nicholson, who would take on the lead role of the movie. The film was indeed based on the novel by Stephan King, of the same name. The whole plot of the film basically revolves around a writer, Jack, taking a job as an off-season caretaker at an isolated hotel. His young son possesses psychic abilities and is able to see things in the future and past, such as the ghosts who inhabit the hotel. Soon after moving in (after a winter storm that leaves the family snowed in) Jack becomes influenced by a supernatural presence at the hotel, he descends into madness and attempts to murder his wife and son. As a movie, still to this very day, held in high regard when it comes to the making of horror movies it is important to see what conventions it follows of the whole horror genre.

 

First of one of the most obviously conventions of horror used within the shining is the use of a setting with history/past attached to it. This applies to the hotel that Jack and his family are looking after for the winter as it had a history of a previous caretaker killing his family in the hotel after going crazy, this is a convention of horror of the setting being in a spooky place.

Another convention is of a normal (good) person turning into a psycho (bad) person. This happens to Jack as the isolation turns him from a loving family man into a murderous psychopath. This is a convention of horror films and plays very well to this convention. Even the ‘supernatural’ played apart in the film and is used in horror films as Danny (Jacks son) develops an ability called ‘The Shining’ in which with this ability he could communicate without the use of words.  Jacks weapons of choice are not ones that’ll cause a quick and easy death but rather ones that’ll cause a lot of pain and a slow death, his weapon being his now infamous woodchopper.  This makes any death he creates close and personal.

Jack turning good to evil

The second movie I am going to talk about is ‘Saw 1’.

Saw one is the starting film of the successful horror 7 part series ‘Saw.’ Released in 2004 it is an independent horror film directed by James Wan from a screenplay by Leigh Whannell and story by Whannell and Wan. The film was first screened on January 19, 2004. Lionsgate picked up the rights and released the film in the United States and Canada on October 29, 2004. Critical responses was generally mixed and divided. Compared to its low budget, Saw performed very well at the box office grossing more than $103 million worldwide and becoming, at the time, one of the most profitable horror films since 1996's Scream. The success of the film prompted a green light of a sequel soon after Saw's opening weekend, which was released the following October.

 
For a horror film it takes the unusual step of not technically having any killer or murder in the movie but rather an instigator in the people’s death. The whole plot of the first film is that the film's story revolves around two men who are chained in a dilapidated subterranean bathroom and are each given instructions via a microcassette recorder on how to escape. One is told he must escape the bathroom, while the other is told to kill him before a certain time, or his family will die. Meanwhile, police detectives investigate and attempt to apprehend the mastermind behind the "game". This means that Saw did not follow the usual conventions of what people see in a horror movie. Instead of a horror movie based on pure murder it plays on people’s minds, so this makes it a physiological thriller.  It does follow many conventions though such as where the movie is based. They’re in a bloody bathroom in an underground dungeon so this plays on the convention of all horror movies being based in a setting that has past or is spooky/scary. Any weapon in which they’d have to use to break free from their chains is also a weapon that will cause a lot of prolonged pain/suffering such as the saw. This helps to play on the audience’s consciousness, as they have to watch a man suffer from chopping off his foot. This follows conventions of a physiological thriller as the audience cannot bare to watch but is drawn to watch it.  Low-key lighting is also used throughout the movie and as you begin to think that they might break free bright lights in the room come on to symbolise hope. But as the hope soon diminishes the lights turn off, to show that hope of being saved leaving.

Lastly, the 3^rd film I am going to talk about is the Japanese horror movie ‘The Grudge’. The Grudge is the 2004 American remake of the Japanese film Ju-on: The Grudge, and the first horror film in the Ju-on series, Ju-on 1. The film is the first installment in the American horror film series The Grudge. The film was released in North America on October 22, 2004 by Columbia Pictures, and was directed by Takashi Shimizu (director of the original series) while Stephen Susco scripted the remake. In the same tradition as the original series, the plot of the film is told through a non-linear sequence of events and includes several intersecting subplots.   

The Grudge describes a curse that is born when someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage or extreme sorrow. The curse gathers in the place where that person died. Those who encounter this murderous supernatural force die and the curse is reborn repeatedly, passed from victim to victim in an endless, growing chain of horror. The following events are explained in their actual order, the film showing them in a non-linear narrative. Because of the way in which the order of the movie goes it doesn’t follow the usual convention of a horror movie.   Non-linear narrative order, wherein events are portrayed out of chronological order. It is often used to mimic the structure and recall of human memory but has been applied for other reasons as well. The non-linear narrative order is used to show many flashbacks from ‘The Grudges’ life/past. The film is based on the ‘supernatural’ and plays on the audiences’ mind of more of what they can’t see scare them.