The conventions of the horror genre

Horror movies typically use many conventions to signify the genre, including settings, technical codes, iconography, narrative structure, character types and themes.
Settings for horrors are rarely seen in busy built up cities, yet nearly most horrors are made in small towns or isolated places/environments. These isolated places do not only keep us on the edge of our seats scared, but within the world of the movie it allows characters to be far away from help and safety. More often these abandoned towns/buildings have had past history of evil, disease and murders, giving reasons to the disappearance of life. Places with pasts often return, like in john Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), after Mike Myers murdered his sister and boyfriend at a young age he then returned 15 years later to the small American town to murder again. Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis, often used in horrors movies) is then left in the destructive path of Mike Myers who wants to kill her and re-live the murder of his sister. Although being the victim she is also seen as the hero, with her less attractive clothes, unisex name, and job to protect the children. Unlike her two close girl friends that are seen in the film to have sex, she does not, which is typically depicted in movies that if you have sex you die.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a character, it can also be the repressed mind returning, and this is seen in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), when Jack Torrance’s (Jack Nicholson) mind slowly deteriorates in the isolated hotel in the mountains with just his family, until the return of the repressed (Sigmund Freud theory) turns Jack against his wife and son. Once jack has fully turned crazy, Wendy, his wife, is then left to defend herself and her son away from Jack’s thoughts and new aggressive manner. This film is very interesting that there may be two protagonists. Jack’s son Danny gets a heads up of the evil that is going to happen at the hotel that they are looking after over winter, isolated away in the mountain, he see’s visions. These visions warn him that his dad is going to do bad things and hurt him, however could these visions be the lead for him to save himself and his mom. Wendy yet is still got to protect her son, and yet being the victim she is also thought to be the hero by saving her son.
















More recent horrors like Wes Cravens Scream (1996), part spoof and part slasher, we hear the characters in the world of the movie talk about how to survive a horror movie. Their rule number one being, ‘you can not have sex’. Through this classic, those who have had sex are picked off by the masked killer. The main protagonist Sydney Prescott, victim and eventually hero, who has not had sex, voids being killed on numerous occasions, therefore the classic rule is upheld. However Sydney breaks the rule at the end of the film when after having sex (With one of the killers, which was unknown to her at the time) she still defeats the monsters (Now unmasked killers). Throughout the film they carry on the classic theory that having sex will lead to your death, but the main protagonist defeats this rule, and does so in the next two sequels where she is chased by the new masked killers.
The male gaze in horrors can also

Horror movies typically have young teenagers all wanting to break the law, have sex, go to empty abandoned places etc. Teenagers are usually targeted as the victims as the main target audience for horrors are people aged between 15-24, and often couples. Females cast in horrors today are young and attractive, sometimes unknown actresses, looking to make a name for themselves.