The Key Conventions Of The Horror Genre.

Don,t
Ignore
Settings
Technical code
Iconography
Narrative structure
Character types
Themes

Settings
- Small communities or isolated places – more rural/suburban than inner city. This offers more opportunities for a sense of isolation, or for a whole committing to harbour a secret.
- Often places with a “past” which will return. Abandoned house, old lunatic asylum etc.
- Homes, usually with different levels and cellars and attics – places for secrets and past to inhibit.
- Basements connote out primitive instincts and attics our repressed terrors.
- Night time/out of hour – often places of “innocent” daytime fun but out of hours eg playgrounds.
- Religions/ medical institutions – possession, demons, psychosis.
- Dreams in the unconscious mind.
- “The East” – strange, other cultures with weird traditions.

Technical Code
- Camerawork is expressive rather than naturalistic. Weird high and low angles. Canted camerawork is common as it is disorientating.
- Extreme Close Ups on victims to enable the audience identification with terror and to exclude the threat from frame (more scary if you don’t know where it is) Sudden close up of monsters or villains connote invasion of our personal space.
- Point Of View shooting is very important – subjective, hand-help or stedicam camerawork often places audiences in monster’s eyes – raises issies about audience identification. Clover (Men, Woman and Chainsaws) argues this usually switches to the victim/protagonist/final girl as the film progresses. Again raises issues about audience identification.
- Camerawork often makes use of depth frame – protagonist in foreground unaware of monster emerging from background.
- Editing may create unsettling jumps from Long Shot to Close Up, rather than smooth use of Medium Shot. Editing pace may be used to create suspense. Sudden increases in editing pace may be used to create suspense.
- Sudden increases in editing pace when there is not apparent threat creates feeling of jumpiness – something must be about to happen…
- Sound may be very important. Ambient sound for atmosphere, footsteps, heartbeats high in the sound mix.

Iconography
- Visual signifiers of genre are readily apparent. The colours black and red (obvious connotations of darkness, evil, blood and danger etc).
- Lighting expressive and non-naturalistic. Motivated, low-key, high contrast, chiaroscuro, to emphasise shadows. Lighting direction often from unexpected angles – eg below, to create unfamiliar shadows (and connote hell, bonfires, primitive instincts etc, as natural light – sunlight, moonlight, room lights – are always above us).
- A selection of the commoner objects in the mise-en-scene would unclude weapons, (particularly bladed), blood masks, icons of the supernatural (ghosts, moving objects) and religion (crucifixes, pagan symbols).
- Iconography of childhood/innocence – dolls, playgrounds, clowns – children’s songs.

Narrative Structure
- Classic realistic/classic Hollywood narrative structure (normally – enigma>path to resolution>closure, or hero>agent of change>quest>resolution>closure) largely applicable to genre, although there may be “false closures” and the real closure is often left ambiguous for two reasons – 1. To suggest mythic quality of the monsters and 2. To enable a sequel. This conception of narrative structure is based on Todorov’s theories.
- The clear, unambiguous hero of the classic Hollywood narrative is somewhat problematic in many horrors – as the main protagonist, the “final girl” of the slasher and many other horror films is a victim/hero rather than a simple hero, and thus provides a point of masochistic identification for the spectator which is more complicated than in many other genres.
- The narrative of some sub-genres, such as the slasher is very formulaic. Childhood psychotic event creates killer who return to past location on an anniversary to kill again – usually a group od stupid “immoral” teenagers etc with one (virginal, slightly masculine) female character who survives – the “final girl” concept.
- Barthes’ and Levi Strauss’, structured narrative analysis – not so concerned with linear development but more with underlying mythic structures – works particularly well with horror. Binary oppositions abound, for example innocence/evil very sinister atmosphere through a reliance on our awareness of the existence of the “opposite term” to innocence. Hence the use of dolls, fairgrounds, nursery rhymes, children etc.

Character Types
- Main protagonist often “victim/hero” – the final girl, androgynous.
- Monsters with a hidden secret or made psychotic by an earlier event.
- Stupid/“immoral” teens
- Children
- Ineffectual police and “normal” law enforcers (horror is not containable through normal channels).
- The “have a go” hero who gets killed.
- Scientists who do stupid things or over-reach their powers.
- People who refuse to believe.
- The serial killer.

Themes
- Binary oppositions – naturalistic VS unnatural; good VS evil, known VS unknown.
- Return of the represses – Fruedian theory – horror is often close to sex in some way.
- The hidden evil inside.
- What lies on the other side of death?
- The “documentary”.
- The mass incarnate infestation.
- The unknown, unfolding terror.
- Creature from beyond.