horror genre codes and conventions
TRANSCRIPT
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