What makes horror well horror?: Research

 After researching and selecting the genre Horror, I was thinking well what makes horror, horror?

What needs to be Inside of a Horror Film

Understanding Horror Genre Conventions and Obligatory Scenes | Story Grid Writing Guide by Darian on Books

Even though this video is based off of Horror books it still applies to horror films as many popular horror films are based off of their book versions for example: The Shining (1980), It (2010), and The Exorcist (1973).

Horror Conventions

Monster/evil force

• Have a monster/killer present that will do horrible things towards the main cast
• The evil force such as a paranormal or demonic entity causing the horrible actions

Character Isolation

• Denying of the characters to easily get help
• This plays on many peoples psychological fears of being alone/isolated
• This can be depicted in many different ways such as separation of group or a character/group alone in the wilderness.
• When the group splits up and everyone is alone it causes more of a scare as the character must face challenges all on their own.
• Driving attention towards the film as the audience is interested in seeing how each different character will react towards the danger
• Also making them wonder well what will happen? who will die?

Characters ignore warning signs

• One of the most popular examples of this is a creepy noise in a basement and the characters saying "lets go check it out"
• These characters ignore the obvious signs such as calling the police or just leaving the house and instead go towards the obvious danger
• This gives the audience something to be worried about like obviously knowing that something bad is going to happen and have that sinking feeling, amping up the tension and anticipation towards what is going to happen next.

Dread & Suspense

• Every time a character makes the wrong decision it is increasing tension, leading to an increase in the dread & suspense that comes with the audience knowing something horrible is about to happen.
• By drawing this out and using jump scares that aren't the monster to scare the character making the audience believe that something bad is about to happen but in reality it isn't increasing the suspense in the situation.

Themes of morality

• In many horror movies there is an unlikeable flaw with a character which is a signal that the character is about to die.
• Bad people/people with bad morals are people who are going to die.
• This can be approached in many ways such as the bad character dying due to the monster, or them getting a redemption arc just to get killed by the monster.
• But also those same bad guys that got the redemption arc could actually survive in the end because they decided to get their acts together to make it out alive.
• Then you have the good guys who may or may not survive because they are ignoring the warning signs or one wrong move sends them into an early grave.
• Morality plays a role in these films (not always in the most obvious of ways)

Inciting threat

• By starting off with a dead of a character either bad or good by the monster/evil force immediately it shows us the inciting threat
• This sets up the fact that a monster/evil force is coming for the characters allowing for the audience to know right away what type of film it is.

Confrontation

• This is the group of people who go lets say camping and are being picked off one by one. Until it gets down to the main character who is put up against this monster that has been slowly (or fast) picking them off one by one.

Escape & Survival

• The meat of the horror movie is the main character trying to survive, trying to escape the monster/evil force, or maybe even assist with helping their friends escape
• Biggest part of the movie as it is the pitch of exactly what is happening/going to happen.

Hope is lost

• There is always a point in the film where the main character has either lost all their friends, or they are one of the only characters left.
• This leaves this character to feel backed up into a corner thinking that this is it and that they won't make it out alive
• This character knows that they are about to die

Final Showdown

• The audience sees the main character pull through somehow, they see this character fighting tooth and nail to survive
• The audience may believe that this character will die at first but this character is not giving up fighting for their life
• Somehow this character finds something that then defeats this monster

Example

After finding all of these horror conventions I wanted to find a scene from a horror movie that puts some if not all of these conventions to work.

Tarot (2024) - Libra Ladder Kill Scene | Movieclips

This scene from the movie Tarot shows the character all alone in a isolated environment. As she walks closer to the attic ladder we hear a demonic giggle, this character ignores this clear warning sign and still thinks its her "dorm mates" up there when she knows that they already left for the holidays. We as the audience feel a sense of dread as she begins to climb up the ladder as we can already tell the demonic giggle plus the dark lighting present in the scene is a tell-tale sign that something bad is about to happen. We see her shine light onto the dark attic where we can see creepy things also adding onto the dread we already felt. We see something move along with a sudden noise adding onto the building tension. Then when the character spins around nothing is there. We hear this running up sound but when the character turns around nothing is there increasing the tension.

We see the lights flickering adding onto the warning signs as a flickering light is a popular indication that something is about to go down. It goes dark and we again hear the giggle adding suspense as the audience is thinking will she make it out? Is she going to die? As she looks back up in the attic we see it illuminated by candles (which was not there at first), along with upside down crosses indicating that the monster might be nun style. We hear the conversation that she had earlier with her friend in a more twisted way indicating that the cards may be what is summoning these monsters. Then we get introduced to the monster which has a nun style of clothing. This happens as the character looks up from the card and sees the monster screaming in her face causing her to fall down the stairs (after the voice says you will suffer a crushing blow) this indicates that she will in fact not survive and instead she will die. We think that she will escape by seeing her try to crawl away before being promptly dragged back underneath the stairs. Allowing the audience to get an idea on what will happen next. The monster repeatedly drives the stairs into the back of the victim until she died.