Codes and Conventions of Horror

Codes and conventions of a horror genre
Horrors are unsettling films that are designed to:
• Frighten and cause Panic
• They are supposed to create dread and alarm the audience
• They are supposed to Invoke our hidden and most worst fears
• They often contain a terrifying and shocking ending
• Designed to scare the audience as well as entertain.

Most horror movies are made to scare, and to entertain, yet someone some even manage to find your fears and exploit them. There are many great horror movies, such as the Conjuring and Insidious, which not only have great actors, but the story is simply amazing.


However, you do come across many things is horror, one of them being clichés. It usually ends up as a group of teenagers or young adults travelling to an isolated area for a holiday or college work, and then finding themselves being killed one by one by a mysterious creature which had somehow acquired several farm tools, the most brutal ones at that.


There are also many enigma codes in horror films, where people keep mysteriously disappearing, especially in Friday the 13th, with Jason Voorhees. The characters in this film keep getting killed and people disappear whilst a certain character is left alone in the woods to fend for themselves and find their friends, but there are certain clues left which brings the audience further into the story as they try and figure it out themselves.


There is a lot of very interesting diegetic sound, for example when you are brought to eye level of a certain character hiding from a villain, music stops and you are drawn into the sound of loud thuds of footsteps either above them or around them, and then suddenly the door slams open and the character is swung out to be killed or something brutal along those lines.


Also, with camera shots, there are mostly dolly shots of people running, where the camera follows the character running through a woods.