The name horror movie first came from critics of the film industry in 1931 from the films Dracula and Frankenstein, horror movies have been developing conventions ever since then. When horror films first started out they use to play on people’s fears of supernatural entity’s to cause the viewer nightmares. However in today’s society films are more surreal with physiological thrillers, serial killers and a mass outbreak of some type of disease. The key convention however is to cause alarm and terror in the audiences mind or to revolt them entirely. This can be done in numerous ways from having gory graphical scenes or applying the audience’s fears and nightmares into the film. The viewers are attracted to these types of films as they have a great deal of tension and cause them to be on the edge of their seats. Typical conventions of a horror movie include darkness, screams, blood, death, isolated settings and chase scenes.
Some themes within the horror genre include paranormal activity, torture, ancient curses, or an evil force out to get one or a group of people. Some films in this category are ‘Insidious’, ‘Paranormal Activity’ and ‘Drag Me to Hell’. Although these types of films are not surreal, they scare the user with the key aspect of something that is unknown. Some are more realistic, for example a serial killer on the lose trying to kill someone, more often than not these people are innocent however lately some horror films are highlighting moral decisions and ethicality, For instance the girls that are more promiscuous tend to die first in horror movies which could give the younger generation who are more prone to being swayed by what they see a negative view of these types of people. For example in these two pictures from the movie ‘Scream 4’ the two girls on the left are typical blonde bimbos, they are more likely to die before the girl on the right.
Some themes within the horror genre include paranormal activity, torture, ancient curses, or an evil force out to get one or a group of people. Some films in this category are ‘Insidious’, ‘Paranormal Activity’ and ‘Drag Me to Hell’. Although these types of films are not surreal, they scare the user with the key aspect of something that is unknown. Some are more realistic, for example a serial killer on the lose trying to kill someone, more often than not these people are innocent however lately some horror films are highlighting moral decisions and ethicality, For instance the girls that are more promiscuous tend to die first in horror movies which could give the younger generation who are more prone to being swayed by what they see a negative view of these types of people. For example in these two pictures from the movie ‘Scream 4’ the two girls on the left are typical blonde bimbos, they are more likely to die before the girl on the right.
This is also shown in many other teen horror movies such as ‘Piranha 3D’ and ‘Final Destination’.
A sub-genre is a sub class of a larger genre, or a category within a category, for example Sub genres are useful for the audience as when they are looking into a horror film to watch they can quickly determine what kind of horror film it will be, for example if it has been labelled as an extra- terrestrial sub-genre then the audience know that the film will be about aliens, sub-genres give enough information about the type of the movie for the audience to consider whether or not they feel like watching the horror film. Some horror sub genres are increasing in popularity while some are decreasing, for example extra-terrestrial use to be very popular but is now being taken over by slasher and teen movies, which mostly appeal to the younger generation. A classic example of a teen slasher movie is ‘I’ll always know what you did last summer’. Another typical horror sub-genre is animation, for examples ‘Dead Space: Aftermath’ and ‘Resident ‘Evil: Degeneration’.
Hybrid genres are becoming more and more popular in this day and age; this is to keep the audience entertained and more excited about the films and to increase the target audience, wider appeal. A hybrid genre is when two main genres are combined together so that we can see the key conventions of both types of films in one film. For example the movie ‘Splice’ is a cross between horror and sci-fi. Another example is a film called ‘Lesbian vampire killers’ which is a cross between comedy and horror. Other horror hybrid genres include romantic- horror, dark humour- horror and fantasy-horror.
No comments:
Post a Comment