HORROR GENRE CODES & CONVENTIONS

CAN YOU IDENTIFY HORROR SUB GENRES?

• Identify at least two horror sub genres and provide movie examples.

• What relevant horror conventions do they have?

SUPERNATURAL HORROR

• Can include ghosts, monsters, dark forces, zombies, creepy things that can’t be found in the real world.

DARK FANTASY

• contains fantasy elements with a horror twist, or horror with a distinctly fantastical setting.

SCI-FI HORROR

• mash up of science fiction and horror, usually where the sci-fi aspects (aliens, space travel, robots) are used to precipitate the overriding horror.

PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR

• driven by characters fears and focused more on psychological dread than on murder, mutilation, and gore. Could be supernatural, but is more often associated with those twists where the protagonist turns out to be insane.

GOTHIC

• involves psychological terror in historically romantic settings, usually includes mysteries, ghosts, castles, decay, madness, hereditary curses and death.

SUSPENSE/ THRILLER

• does not involve any supernatural or otherworldly aspects, instead relying on real-life situations to generate horror through serial killers, deadly situations, natural disasters and psychopaths.

SLASHER MOVIES

• typically involving a mysterious, generally psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims usually in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a knife, an axe, or a chainsaw.

TASK: IN PAIRS USE THE WORKSHEET TO PRODUCE A PRESENTATION ON THE CODES AND CONVENTIONS THINKING OF AS MANY HORROR FILMS WITHIN THE SUB-GENRE

TYPICALS EXAMPLES FILMS

SETTINGS

PROPS

COSTUME

NON-VERBAL

COMMUNICATION

CINEMATOGRAPHI

C TECHNIQ

UES

EDITING

SOUND EFFECTS

MUSIC

NARRATIVES

(ENIGMA, BINARY

OPPOSITIONS?

TODOROV’S

THEORY?)

CHARACTERS

THEMES