Key Conventions of the Horror Genre

There are many conventions that create the horror genre as a whole, but over time there have been specific conventions that are now passed onto each new horror film. One of the main conventions, which will occur, is to do with the location of where it is, normally this could be a haunted house or an isolated area (Eden Lake). Or if it is like ‘Halloween’ it could be a suburbia estate. These types of locations are the most popular across the genre of Horror.

In several films like ‘Eden Lake’ or ‘The Shining’ the audience are placed in isolated environments, which will bring you the feeling of an approachable danger. To go with the idea of the setting of the Horror movie, the places may have a past connection with the main killer or hunter. Why this usually happens is because something in their lives happened there and the new hero has either moved in or been there at some point in time. This is mainly a tool used in a way of creating twists within the story and is used quite regularly. Halloween set itself in a suburban area and the event was to do with the house he had lived in as a kid (The killer that is). Over time after he was put to prison, you see the house is still there and remains untouched due to its past history. Residents occupy every other house besides that, but it seems very quiet and peaceful. But like we say about locations, peaceful goes well with horror you don’t hear the killer coming.

Horror movies always have lighting to their advantage, how do you make it scary? Well if you take films like Halloween and Friday the 13th, the lighting plays the biggest part. This is down to it being very low-key lighting; there are hints of light that normally comes from things like the moon or a torch but all this plays towards the scariness of the movie. For us it sheds some light towards the final girl or hero for them to believe they can escape from wherever they are. But as were watching the audience feel like that there is going to be something coming out of somewhere and it puts some suspense and questioning where the killer or villain will strike. Movies that use lighting to its advantage is films like Halloween, the idea is it’s late at night and the killer is hiding within the shadows.
While watching ‘Halloween’ the lighting is what made the movie as good as it was, you had the teenagers having sex and it pans around and in the shadows you see the shape of a face just starring at them. And it’s that sort of idea that makes it terrifying and you yourself are on the edge of your seat. Early dated films such as Nosferatu used lighting to achieve fear like the shadows of the vampire appearing large on the walls to show power of this creature.


The next convention which sometimes the audience while watching it are unaware of are the amount of close ups throughout the film. Halloween is a good example of this; the main character is normally having a close up of her face when she believed she had been seeing things in the distance. This is what she felt was there, this is carried on throughout the film showing her fear when she comes across the people she know that are dead as well as being chased by the main killer.

You got many close ups of the killer as he killed his victims in the film, but as he was wearing a mask you couldn’t see his emotions but by the close up of the non-serious mask. It showed that he honestly didn’t care what happened and was just going to continue like nothing happened. When we get to the fighting parts close ups are what are mainly shown, especially of the main character. It shows her being scared and confused on what to do and this made the audience feel discomfort etc.
Besides the occurrence of Close ups there is often a couple Extreme Close Ups (ECU) in Halloween and normally any other Horror Movie the reason for it is that when there is an ECU on the victim (Final Girl or Hero of Male gender) to allow us as the audience to identify with terror. The other purpose of it that keeps the tension is that if we only see an eye or a mouth of the victim we have lost location of the killer and we are more tensed wondering where he/it will be next.
Horror itself uses these close ups to bring the tension to the screen, along with close ups the viewer may come across point of view shots. These shots are present in Halloween also where the main character believes she is seeing this guy that has been following her in the distance but in the end isn’t but after the walk away you see it from the killer’s view.
No matter what film you may see there are always multiple amounts of camera angles. But in Horror they are different to the extent on how they’re shown. Camera Angles play a big role in the way of terror, for example in both Halloween and The shining, low camera angles were laid on the heroes to show a sense of helpless at the hands of the killer. This was the opposite for the killer normally it would be a high angle to show their power over the Hero etc. But this isn’t always true as it can switch depending on the situation that occurs between the two.
The most popular in camera work is the canted camera effect, which is used in some Horrors, the camera is more on a slant, which makes the image seem a little more disorientated. But that type of effect compliments the Horror Genre, you could say it was used in the early days in ‘The Cabinet of Dr Caligari’ German Expressionism 1930.
The next popular thing to find especially in slasher movies is a weapon of some kind that the killer uses. Halloween, Eden Lake and The Shining all use blunt weapons such as a knife or axes. Other films like Final Destination go for environmental killings and Saw for twisted games.
Halloween itself was the beginning of the sub-genre the slasher movie. It begun the use of a blade in this case a kitchen knife as his weapon of choice, as time went on a change in weaponry came about. Nightmare on Elm Street had Freddy the killer have knifes on each finger. If the knife or blunt weapon were disarmed the killer would use the environment such as a telephone line (Halloween) or any other dangerous killing option to murder the victims.

Moving onto the victims or the characters in the Horror movies, the most common of all would be the average teenager. From slasher movies to general Horror movies, teenagers are used as the main character as well as the victims. The reason for this is that the target audience for Horror movies are now the teenage/young adult audience. So to immerse that type of audience you need characters of similar age to feel a connection between the two.
Whenever we cross teenagers in horror movies they tend to be reckless people who are normally having drinks, sex and anything else of the sort. Films that show this are ‘Eden’ Lake and ‘Halloween’ from what we have studied. They tend to be killed due to them being reckless and stupid in the movie.

Halloween is an example of teenagers as the main characters, each one is killed off and it lead up to a female character. The female Laura was a virgin and this carries along through most of those types of films, she tends to also be slightly masculine. In this case she was a babysitter and was quite mature amongst her other girl mates. Other films like Final Destination 3 took a female as the final girl who was also to the same description as Laura from Halloween.
Besides the main hero often being female, law enforcement tends to be ineffectual. In Halloween they are laid back and refuse to believe the doctors that a killer is on the loose down to it being Halloween. Horror films make law enforcers less caring then reality, they make the main hero believe it is a joke till they themselves later discover it was actually true.

Horror usually has a theme of some sort of theme, we studied that they expanded into many different themes. Back in the early 50/60’s it was to do with monsters within us (Cat people, Werewolf), or mutation. Evil scientists were common as well like Jeckel and Hide and Frankenstein. To the current day and theme of horror it has moved into the path of the psychopath. Friday the 13th, Halloween (Remakes), Nightmare on Elm Street etc is the most common of all. The other type of horror is now the torture porn series of Saw, the all have the same style but adapted in small ways. We the audience should know what to expect from each if we are told what the film is called and the genre of horror it is. I think these conventions are what make the Horror Genre what it is.