Damola Rahaman Salami

What is horror?

The horror genre is a special type of genre that can use other genres, like sci-fi without losing itself. The reason why it is enjoyed is because gives the audience a different feeling, it causes the audience to fear the villain along with the victims, while still being enjoyable and not traumatising.

A film can be successful at becoming a horror by following the right paradigms such as:

† Iconography

† Setting/location

† Characters/villains

† Props/weapons

† Themes and structures

What is the point?

A horror film is nothing without a good setting, this is essential as it adds to the fear created within the minds of the audience. It is also vital that the setting is relevant and significant to the plot, it would be really weird to find a killer in a setting like a newly built modern office.

The ideal settings for a horror film are places such as warehouses (saw), the woods or schools (Jennifer's body which uses both). Remote areas are also good because the idea of the victims screaming at the top of their lungs in hope of being heard, is scary for the audience as they empathise and imagine themselves in the same position. They are lost and alone.

The lighting of the setting can also be vital to a horror, bringing a sense of unknown terror, but however daylight brings forth the unexpected.

Setting/Location

There are many types of characters, they fall perfectly under Propp’s character that can be recycled for other movies and genres. The characters can range in ages but the most conventional ones are usually teenagers - these are the most hostile but the most vulnerable age group

These characters involve:

† The victims/hero- who can be a weak male character that beats all odds and grow in strength not only physically but mentally, or the pure virgin in white that survives

† The False hero- a strong male character/boyfriend to the virgin girl (usually popular or plays a highly physical sport).

† The helper- the person who is by the victim’s side until they die for the victim’s sake

† The popular girl- conventionally a cheerleader who dies because she is not a virgin, or has sex onset then dies

† The villains- is the antagonist of horror, either masked or unmasked, in dark clothing and is well in the mix of everything that happens throughout the film. The villain can be a stereotypical killer with a knife, a supernatural being or a monster. They are usually darkness that over shadows the light which is the victim/hero.

Characters/Villains

The main props used in a horror films are weapons, these are not only to kill a victim or villain but it shows the character of the person holding and the sub genre. For instance, a knife shows that the killer is a type of person that like to see up close the expression and pain of the victim, and therefore will make the film classified as a slasher horror. Usually a victim picks a weapon at random during a film, a majority of the time it is a good weapon considering they do no know the weakness of the villain. At the same time it shows that the victim is desperate to try anything in order to survive, the use of trial and error is a ‘perk’ that the victim use, during a chase scene the stumble across and fall and throw/use weapons that don’t affect the villain until they see the villain bleed (in supernatural horrors, disappear). Sometimes this is not the case, in saw the victims do not come directly in contact with the villain but they use trial and error to escape the villain’s weapon, the roles reverse. This is the take on post structuralism and modernism as it challenges the structure of how we perceived horror films, likewise the weapons, we are used to knifes and weapons with a sharp edges, but now we are faced with guns and other armament, like in 28 days later.

Props