Conventions of the Horror Genre
Conventions of the horror genre (film)
The genre of horror dates back to 1896 with a little known film called Le Manor Du Diable and the idea of inducing fear to your audience was introduced. However the genre never really took off until the release of Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931, where the term horror was first used to label these films.
Horror would then be reborn with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which introduced the convention of the male glare and voyeurism. Hitchcock’s discovered that being watched is a very scary idea, especially when the protagonist isn’t certain of being watched – but only suspicious. This creates a sense of paranoia, one of the scariest emotions of all. The male glare is the concept of a man watching a woman from afar and has been applied to virtually every mainstream horror title post psycho. Psycho also set the bar for having an atmospheric score that fits sets the mood for the entire film. Moreover Hitchcock’s use of reaction shots has also become a convention for the horror genre, as seeing the protagonist’s reaction can be just as scary as the killer and is vital to convey their sense of fear.
From this point onwards many other horror conventions would be established throughout the rest of the 20th century. A media theorist Graeme Burton identified several other conventions of the horror genre, including a “final girl”. A final girl tends to be innocent and pure, meaning she avoids sex/narcotic use and is normally a friendly girl. In many films the final girl has a unisex name (Sydney, Billie, Georgie. She always shows resilience and intelligence as she contently avoids the killer’s grip. Films that use the convention of the final girl include Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream – 4 of the biggest horror franchises in the world. Another convention Burton recognized was a masked antagonist. The 4 films mentioned above all have antagonists who wear masks. The antagonists’ masks and disguises strip them of their humanity, distinguishing them from any other killer. The idea of that which you cannot see being scary also applies here as it’s rather scary imagining what lies behind the mask.
Stock characters in horror films have become a known convention and they normally are more superficial than the final girl. If anything stock characters negatively influence the final girl, who is cautious when it comes to the antagonists whereas stock characters often simply walk straight into him. Burton claimed that teenagers make great stock characters and we see this applied in the vast majority of horror films today. It’s perfect because teenagers fit the image of a shallow, selfish and unintelligent. The red herring is the scapegoat of the horror genre, meaning that throughout the film the audience need someone to pin the killings on. This is great at creating suspense and shock when we find out who the true killer is, provoking a slur of “I told you” at the cinema when the few people who see through the red herring find out he isn’t the killer.
Along with stock characters horror is synonymous with generic stock situations; such as the killer calmly walking after the protagonists who is running for their life. With good direction this simple idea can be turned into one of the tensest situations in the entire film. This situation usually comes along with someone falling over whilst trying to escape the killer. This scene proposes the question of whether or not the killer will off the victim or not.
Voyeurism isn’t the only sexual convention of the horror genre; phallic symbols are frequently used in horror titles - the knife being the most prominent along with the very sexually frustrated action of thrusting it into a helpless woman. This essentially gives the killer a subtle back story showing his relationship with his mother couldn’t have been great. Jason, Michael and the several killers in scream among others all use a knife. Voyeurism accompanied with isolation could be one of the scariest concepts for a woman. Hence the reason it has become a horror convention to place the killer and victims in a suburb or countryside where the population is normally sparse. It is also the place where we the audience do not expect there to be a seemingly unstoppable serial killer.
My final convention in horror films is the idea of sanity. Many of the protagonists do not believe their own sanity, creating a horrible sense of paranoia. Quite often they only realise what they believe is true once it’s too late.
The genre of horror dates back to 1896 with a little known film called Le Manor Du Diable and the idea of inducing fear to your audience was introduced. However the genre never really took off until the release of Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931, where the term horror was first used to label these films.
Horror would then be reborn with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which introduced the convention of the male glare and voyeurism. Hitchcock’s discovered that being watched is a very scary idea, especially when the protagonist isn’t certain of being watched – but only suspicious. This creates a sense of paranoia, one of the scariest emotions of all. The male glare is the concept of a man watching a woman from afar and has been applied to virtually every mainstream horror title post psycho. Psycho also set the bar for having an atmospheric score that fits sets the mood for the entire film. Moreover Hitchcock’s use of reaction shots has also become a convention for the horror genre, as seeing the protagonist’s reaction can be just as scary as the killer and is vital to convey their sense of fear.
From this point onwards many other horror conventions would be established throughout the rest of the 20th century. A media theorist Graeme Burton identified several other conventions of the horror genre, including a “final girl”. A final girl tends to be innocent and pure, meaning she avoids sex/narcotic use and is normally a friendly girl. In many films the final girl has a unisex name (Sydney, Billie, Georgie. She always shows resilience and intelligence as she contently avoids the killer’s grip. Films that use the convention of the final girl include Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream – 4 of the biggest horror franchises in the world. Another convention Burton recognized was a masked antagonist. The 4 films mentioned above all have antagonists who wear masks. The antagonists’ masks and disguises strip them of their humanity, distinguishing them from any other killer. The idea of that which you cannot see being scary also applies here as it’s rather scary imagining what lies behind the mask.
Stock characters in horror films have become a known convention and they normally are more superficial than the final girl. If anything stock characters negatively influence the final girl, who is cautious when it comes to the antagonists whereas stock characters often simply walk straight into him. Burton claimed that teenagers make great stock characters and we see this applied in the vast majority of horror films today. It’s perfect because teenagers fit the image of a shallow, selfish and unintelligent. The red herring is the scapegoat of the horror genre, meaning that throughout the film the audience need someone to pin the killings on. This is great at creating suspense and shock when we find out who the true killer is, provoking a slur of “I told you” at the cinema when the few people who see through the red herring find out he isn’t the killer.
Along with stock characters horror is synonymous with generic stock situations; such as the killer calmly walking after the protagonists who is running for their life. With good direction this simple idea can be turned into one of the tensest situations in the entire film. This situation usually comes along with someone falling over whilst trying to escape the killer. This scene proposes the question of whether or not the killer will off the victim or not.
Voyeurism isn’t the only sexual convention of the horror genre; phallic symbols are frequently used in horror titles - the knife being the most prominent along with the very sexually frustrated action of thrusting it into a helpless woman. This essentially gives the killer a subtle back story showing his relationship with his mother couldn’t have been great. Jason, Michael and the several killers in scream among others all use a knife. Voyeurism accompanied with isolation could be one of the scariest concepts for a woman. Hence the reason it has become a horror convention to place the killer and victims in a suburb or countryside where the population is normally sparse. It is also the place where we the audience do not expect there to be a seemingly unstoppable serial killer.
My final convention in horror films is the idea of sanity. Many of the protagonists do not believe their own sanity, creating a horrible sense of paranoia. Quite often they only realise what they believe is true once it’s too late.