Horror Conventions ☮ ☮ ☮

Clichés

With every horror film you can expect to see at least 5 clichés within the first 30 minutes. Whether it be the dumb cheerleader falling over nothing as she runs from her most certain death, The bullying jock finally getting his comeuppance, whilst threatening the killer only to be stabbed repeatedly in the chest, or the nice girl/boy who turns out to have actually done a heinous deed, causing them to die also, showing an almost deserving death. These are just a few of the predictable scenes we expect from almost every horror film ever made. 

Conventions

Character and Location conventions

Horror films are usually set in rural environments, like farms or mysterious,creepy little towns, which appear normal, then reveal themselves to have dark disturbing secrets,leading the cast to their ultimate death due to their isolation. These places usually are abandoned with a dark history, like asylums,hotels,mansions/houses, lakes and farms.

The films usually focuses on a small set of friends or families, to concentrate on their characters, so you know why and whether they deserve to die. Horrors also usually conform to stereotypes like the pretty girl, the dumb one, the jock, and the so called "normal" one, which you presume you can relate to the most, who also the film focuses on as it's main character for this reason. The types of villain that is taunting the main protagonists usually form around ghosts, demons,monsters,possessed people and slasher type films with just a random psychopath with a knife in a mask(most of the time). When it comes to people that can help the main cast from tragedy, it usually ends up that the person/people that can help either get killed or end up being evil also, This can happen with the police, friends and even sometimes family.

Screen effects and camera angles/shot type conventions

Majority of horror films usually use bleak dark colours to show obscurity and to give off the illusion of night to scare the audience, it also forces the audience to watch closely to see what happens, which in the end leads to them getting the full frightening effect. The lighting used isn't usually set with normal daylight, and can come across as non-realistic, these are usually the films that are involved with demons and ghosts as they don't involve real people. With shot type you usually get extreme close ups of characters faces, not so much with the villain as they are supposed to be mysterious and unknown, but usually ends with a close up of them in a which flash up shot to scare and introduce an action scene. With our protagonists horror films often use close ups to show the fear in their face and sometimes when they're being killed to show their pain. In the many running scenes in horror films, the angle that is most likely chosen is a medium shot shown just enough of the characters surrounding and themselves to the audience, but not enough to show the thing that is chasing them,seeing the villain running after the victim usually humanises the antihero and puts them almost at the same level of the victim. Although some horrors go against the professional look , and show a home made look by using a shaky camera style like you would see in a documentary, where it appears that the actors are holding the camera and gives it a raw effect and makes it seem more realistic to the audience. 

Theme and Narrative Conventions

The themes that are used in horror films all pretty much are the same these include, Gore, which usually fits in with slasher movies like nightmare on elm street, the Saw franchise and the Halloween franchise.Religion, like exorcisms which also fits with possessed people which usually is psychological and involves creepy nuns and priests in scary ancient churches with creepy looking paintings. Also Ghosts/Demons, Where a certain family's house they recently bought,which seems to come alive with haunting, and usually involves a seance in there somewhere, which almost always seems to fail leaving the family defeated and the poltergeist/demon/ghost in victory.

 If there is narrative in a horror film, The majority of the time the voice belongs to the main protagonist,it usually is the survivor/ last person to be killed off, most of the time once they finish describing the story of them and their family/friends, they end up either dying themselves or making a big reveal/twist, usually being that they were the killer or something along those lines. This type of narrative usually follows the "victims" of the story giving background to their characters,with the villain just being part of the story. Though when we are unknown of the narrator, they usually do give some background the villain(s) to show why they have the urge to murder people, to possibly make the audience empathise for the villain in some ways, to show what a person can really be pushed to doing.

Horror isn't really a genre that i enjoy, not because i'm terribly frightened, I can be depending on the film, but because the storyline never seems to have any substance, but i will say there are a couple of classic horror films that i thought where brilliant performance wise and plot wise though don't completely fit into horror, "The Silence Of The Lambs" , "The Shining" and "The Birds", nowadays horror movies don't care a much about the compelling storylines which attract me but for more of the jumpiness and graphics of a monsters face, which is all fair enough, but a truly thought out terrifying storyline would top it off.