Genre Conventions

Horror is a very broad genre as it can be split into several subgenres:

• The Monster Scare
• Psychological Thriller
• Slasher Pics
• Zombie Films

All of these horror films have specific conventions that make them easily recognisable to an audience. These conventions include:

Setting

Isolated towns or small communities. Small farmhouses or cabins in the woods are common settings for horror films. As well as this, cities and dark alleyways are becoming more frequent in modern horror films.

Often settings include a "dark" or "haunting" history such as abandoned cabins or asylums.

Horror films that feature these settings: Misery (1990), The Shining (1980), The Amityville Horror (1979), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), The Others (2001), Grave Encounters (2011).

Sound/Music
Horror films often feature a large amount of non-diegetic sound in order to set the mood. Some of the best film scores have come from horror films as they can perfectly capture the atmosphere and emotions of the characters,

For example: the famous shower scene in Psycho has become so infamous as the classic horror film score.


Characters
Every horror film has a typical set of characters because these types of people create an emotion in the viewer when they are suddenly killed off. For example, in every horror film there is the female victim.
In the first Scream film the opening scene is of Drew Barrymore, the teenage girl alone at home, being harassed on the phone and then killed.
There is also the common theme of the promiscuous girl who gets killed off, usually in the beginning of the film or programme.