GD Conventions of a Horror Film

Horor films are films that try to engage the audiences emotion of fear, horror and terror.
Generally they will involve themes of death, mental illness or supernatural happenings and tend to have a main villain or villains.

Earlier films tend to be based on literacy such as 'Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde' nut since WW2 other sub genres have formed about insecurities of life. These are:

horror of personality e.g. 'Phsycho'
horror of armageddon e.g. 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'
horror of the demonic e.g. 'The Exorcist'

Through the years from 1940 onwards however many other genres have been formed due do the taste of the audience and the constant facination to want more and more horrifying cinema.

Towards the end of the 60's the still going and popular gore-films emerged, introducing a sexual overtone when going into the 70's an example of a gore film is 'Two Thousand Maniacs!'

Also in the 70's films such as 'hills have eyes' and 'dawn of the dead' related to recent events such as vietnam and the consumer society. The 70's also brought about the very popular slasher genre such as 'Halloween' and 'Black Christmas' which bacame increasingly violent and consisting of a predatory villain with some sort of mental illness.

Some films then came to adopt a science fiction style and terrifying audience through creatures unknown and dangerous for example 'Alien'

Later in the 90's horro films were tend to be made almost ironic with teens in 'scream' tlaking of horror movies and typical 'splatter movies' such as 'Braindead' being made.

Within the 2000 period horror films have seen a return to a more restricted viewing at the cinema with older ratings which please horror fans.

Also a new genre has been made of 'graphic violence' from films such as the very successful 'Saw' and 'Wrong Turn' this very much being the audience wanting to see more and more gore and this genre has been labelled as 'splatterporn' as people when watching become facinated and enjoy the torure endured from films like 'Hostel'.