Horror Deconstruction- Genre Analysis

What does Horror mean? Horror is a genre of a film for instance romance is films with love, fantasy is films set in a different and often magical land and horror is the genre for scary and creepy films for instance ghosts or possesion come under horror. Genre is a french word it translaye as type or class it is used to tell the audience what type of film they are going to watch.

 

 

How can you tell what films fit into the genre? well all films have whats called codes and conventions which is basically everything that makes a film what it is it includes narrative, dialogue, props and eveything else. Horror films are very well known for having blood in them but blood alone doesnt tell you its a horror film but in most horror films the camera shots are usually steady and slow to show a little tension, also the set is usually darker than most other genres, these are two more ways to tell that a film is a horror or not. Take woman in black as an example in the film the camera movements are slow and cautios when nothing is happening but when the scene turns dangerous the camera is usually jumpy showing a bit of fear. 

 

Most horror films have the same general style of camera techniques but differ from film to film mostly due to the story for instance the camera style in resident evil is going to be different from woman in black because of narrative but all horror films have genrally the same idea.

 

Moving away from all of the camera talk start thinking about the way the actors act different to other genres they are mostly dumb people it helps the film look a bit more realistic
For instance in scream, the woman picks the phone up constantly instead of calling the police then she opens the door and tries to kill him instead of running away.



In all horror movies there are similar codes and conventions because of the genre it can also relate to cast and characters for instance you wouldnt cast ben stiller as a pshyco killer in a horror (unless its a horror comedy) no but you might cast someone like christopher lee becuase his acting talents fit the horror genre more than any other wheras ben stilller belongs in comedy