Horror

Setting

For a horror movie the setting is usually placed outside the comfort zone of the main character, good horror films will make this place relatable to the viewer. Settings like these are usually outside the boundaries of social areas (such as forests or abandoned buildings) with the few times the horror will take place in the public (like a bathroom or a subway). Usually these areas are dark and murky with shades of red digitally placed after production , the props placed in a horror setting often show what action will happen in the scene (such a long hallways usually indicating a chasing scene or sharp objects indicating gore).

Technical Code

The technical code for most horror movies is to stay close to the character with cut away shots for the action scenes, the idea is to portray the emotion of fear as much as possible. The shots are mostly fast paced and made manic with shaking to make the audience feel the fear that the character is feeling.

Iconography

You can tell what will be in a horror film or associate objects with a horror film thanks to iconography, these usually involve items like a bloody knife or a damaged dark room which tell you that its obviously a horror situation as so many other horrors display a damaged room and bloody knife leading to someone's gory death. Another good example are bad guys and monsters, any man or woman wearing a mask in a horror movie is most likely the bad guy, we know this because in every horror movie the bad guy will disguise themselves only to reveal who they are at the end. Its not just weapons and people we link to evil, its areas and settings as well, a dark room will indicate a horror scene and something a calming scene will make people nervous as they feel something scary will randomly appear, known as a jump scare.

Narrative Structure

The story to most horror movies is simple, a group of people are living their normal lives and decide to do something to break the cycle of their normal lives, this break causes something to happen that brings about a being that wants to destroy these normal people and the rest of the movie is spent watching how the group react and act to each move the evil being makes against them. The evil being in the end either gets taken down or will leave after having taken down the majority of the group, this leaves the survivors with a moral that is portrayed into the audience. This structures matches most but not all horror movies as the major structure is changed through the development of movies to bring something unique each time, sometimes the evil being will be someone in the group or no-one in the group will survive and instead the being will live to make a sequel to the movie. The horror/thriller movie SAW continued into 6-7 movies due to the fact that there was no evil being but an idea that was followed by random characters throughout the movie and so there are no real survivors at the end.

Character Types

A lot of the actors or characters that you find in movies tend to follow a set of rules as to how the actors can be. For the majority the characters seem like everyone else but the differences are what really get to people when trying to connect with the audience, a well known one is that there is always the character that looks in areas that you know not to because something bad is bound to happen. The separation between male and female tend to be more distinct with girl characters ranging from the good, studying girl to the out all night partying. A guy in a horror movie could range from exercising jock to the guy who has nothing special about them in particular, usually there will be a guy that has a crush on the main character girl or a girl that has a crush on the main character guy. Usually the badly behaving characters die while the good behaving ones will live or defeat the bad guy or monster.

Themes

A lot of horror movies will base the majority of the screen time around the gore/jumps/abnormal activity which will scare the viewer, the colour red makes a lot of appearances and sometimes black, grey and bright light white will show depending on what is happening to the character. The colours can be added after production through digital editing, with the digital editing you also see the special effects like the monsters or the demons that chase after the main character, some movies are based solely around the powers of the demon (like poltergeist) and its movies like these that tend to show the more violent and gory scenes of blood.