Research: Conventions In Horror Films

A convention is something that sets up a setting, scene or a certain type of theme within a film which is  commonly followed within a genre, for example, if you watch a horror film there will be some sort of suspense, tension or jump scares and if it's a comedy there will be jokes and funny movement. It validates it as a certain genre.

An example of a convention is a secluded location in a horror film, this means that the location is out of the way so no one can help the character or character's when they are being hunted. For example a cabin in a forest where it's out of the way and no one can get to them, and another conation would be the trees surrounding the cabin. There's that suspense that you know when a monster or spirit is lurking in there in a forest whether it's a bird or a  squirrel, which also brings in another connection call fake scare where something scares you after a build up of tension and suspense.











More horror conventions consist of where there is a power cut or there is no signal, so the characters have no electricity nor signal to call anybody for help, so they'd be in a dangerous situation, especially when there are things lurking around them. Another common one is when the character trips over when being chased, it's so commonly used that many people make parodies of it and won't put it in anymore recent films because it's too expected. And if someone dies in a horror film in the first 5 minutes it would usually be the minor actor, not the star as the star goes on to tell the story and the minor actor isn't involved that much. Bad weather is a traditional part of a horror film, it starts to get dark and stormy, you know something is merging a bad atmosphere.








another important convention to talk about when on about horror films is the spirits and dolls, films like Annabelle or the Conjuring are very scary because of the dolls and types of ghost that haunts them. And what really makes people on  edge is when the horror trailer or at the end of a horror film it tells us that the tory they are about/told us is true, for example Annabelle was based off true events which happened with a doll, the doll is actually locked up in a museum in America. The conjuring two is based off true events too about a house on 284 green street.

This is the doll from Annabelle and is considered to be haunted.

I have created a mind map of common use of Horror conventions: