Horror films: conventions and sub genres

So the genre I am looking at for my short film is Horror, but what is horror and what are the conventions that come with it?

 

What is horror?

 

Horror is the genre in which fear is shown through the use of many tropes. The main purpose of the genre of horror, whether it is a book or film, is to induce fear into the audience. The first horror film to be produced is “The Devil's castle” made in 1896; after that, more horror films were produced as film production advanced visually with the iconic “Nosferatu” (1922) using features such as low lights and shadows to create tension and fear. And further on, in 1931, the film Frankenstein has used sound as a way to scare the audience through loud and sudden noises and possibly a backing track for suspense.

 

The largest concept of the horror genre is how the genre illustrates the fears of the real world in an exaggerated manner. Over the decades, this has been displayed very clearly, for example horror films in the 40s conveyed how our fears consisted of what mankind would create. Seeing as that was the time when the atomic bomb was created and detonated, killing and destroying the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, inducing fear amongst people due to its destructive power and how we as humans were able to produce such a weapon. As for the 50s, the main fear was of an invasion from an external threat, such as aliens or monsters; films such as “Godzilla” (1956) and “The day the Earth stood still” (1951) presented those fears clearly. For the 60s, it was the fear of ourselves and the idea of how twisted one's mental state can be, in which films such as psycho (1960) were produced to show that. The 70s main fear was of the evil within humans as a whole, with slasher films being made and films such as “The Texas chainsaw Massacre” (1974) to demonstrate it. And this is similar to the 80s seeing as slasher films were still big at that point. However, within the 90s all of that has changed as films such as "The Blair witch project" (1999) has been developed to express how people were afraid of 'the unknown' and this has continued to present time.

Conventions of horror films:

There are many conventions of the horror genre but the more observable tropes include:

• Jump scares
• Screaming
• tension building
• Always set at night or in dark areas
• eerie setting
• fear of the unknown
• isolation
• blood
• unknown killer
• a chase scene
• young victims
• death

These are the more obvious conventions, however, there are plenty of tropes that are specific to the horror genre itself, such as a vehicle never starts at the right moment or someone magically 'falls' just as they're being chased by the perpetrator. 

Subgenres of the horror genre:

Like the other main genres, there are plenty subgenres of horror, with genres such as psychological thriller being one and slasher as another. There is the Sci-fi horror genre with films such as alien and species falling into that subgenre and the more paranormal films such as paranormal activities (2007) and Poltergeist (1982) that involves a ghost or some sort of spirit terrorising the protagonist(s).

Creature feature (also known as rampant animal) films are mainly looking at people's fears of the animal kingdom and how dangerous they can be when, well, rampant. Examples of these films include King Kong (2005) and Jaws (1975). Thriller is also part of the subgenres seeing as they do give the audience a similar feeling of suspense whilst watching them. Whereas, genres such as splatter (gorenography) and supernatural may be straight forward with the feared object/person/being. And then, there are the parodies such as Scary movie (2000) in which they parody a specific film or the horror genre in general.