2. Horror Subgenres & Narrative Set Pieces
• Action Horror – Usually a good guy will end up having a battle with the bad guy.
• Gothic Horror – usually dark and scary. Usually lacks a happy ending.
• Comedy Horror – usually has a main focus which creates fear but is still funny allowing puns and a happy or
neutral ending.
• Psychological Horror – it relies on the emotions and views of the characters to create fear for the viewer.
• Science Fiction Horror – usually involves facing a enemy (alien, mutant, super human or creature) which
cause a lot of havoc and many people die.The creatures are killed and everything is fine.
• Slasher – has an insane killer on the loose, he is eventually caught and/or killed.
• Zombie Films – Zombie Apocalypse has broken out, story.
3. - Action Horrors are a combination of
the action film genre and the
classical horror. Often contains
scenes of intense gunfights and
chases that combine with a dark,
scary atmosphere to make an action
horror, often revolving around an
evil/scary event such as the purge
and the purge: anarchy
- Action Horrors include the ‘Purge:
Anarchy’, ‘Hansel & GretelWitch
Hunters’ and ‘Van Helsing’.
-The action genre obviously requires
action, since none of us happen to be
black belts or samurais, this would
prove too difficult, not to mention
the camera work involved.
Action Horror
4. Zombie Films
- Zombie films obviously feature zombies, or living
corpses that terrorises human characters often in a
post-apocalyptic scenario such as ‘The Road’. Jump
scares are a huge section of zombie films, used to scare
the audience and often are set in urban settings such as
the mist, and focus on the protagonist and their
families’ struggle to survive such as the happening.
- Zombie films include ‘28 days later’, ‘Night of the
Living Dead’ and ‘Dawn of the Dead’
-We don’t have the resources to create different
zombies, as we would need make-up, someone to
actually do the make-up, clothing and plenty of actors
willing to play them.
5. Science Fiction Horror
-This genre of horror combines science fiction
and horror, often with the use of aliens such as
in the film ‘Alien’ and space aggressors as basis
for horror to the characters in the film usually,
horror is normally created through the power or
‘scariness’ of the monsters/aliens.
- Examples of Science Fiction Horrors include
‘Alien’, ‘TheThing’ and ‘Event Horizon’.
-We decided to not focus on science-fiction
horror as a genre as it usually needs a large
budget for the effects and aliens and I do not
believe that we could make it believable or
nearly as effective with our budget and our
timeframe.
-The typical music for this genre would be eerie
and try to bring tension to the situation.
6. Gothic Horror
- Gothic Horrors often are set in a dark,
gloomy, miserable setting such as in an
ancient castle with dungeons or forests
and barren landscapes.They often use
revenge or ancient prophecies, or the
supernatural such as ghosts and curses,
and often feature an isolated lone
protagonist.
- Gothic Horrors include films such as
‘Dracula’, ‘The Mummy’ and
‘Frankenstein’.
-We thought it would be best to avoid
this, as we have no means of obtaining
the setting these types of films are in,
e.g. a castle or a cave
- Much like science fiction the music
would be eerie and would fit the
situation.
7. Comedy Horror
-This subgenre combines horror and
comedic films. So called ‘Gallows
Humour’ is normally used which is
black comedy often referring to death
jovially.
- Examples of comedic horrors include
‘Shaun of the Dead’, ‘LesbianVampire
Killers’ and ‘An AmericanWerewolf in
London’
-We decided to not choose comedy
horror as our chosen genre as comedy
is a notoriously hard genre to go into,
and we are not funny enough to do it
effectively, and it would be a
dangerous genre to use.
-The music of this genre would be
more upbeat to create humour.
8. Psychological Horror - Psychological horrors are much different from
other horror genres.They focus more on the
characters/protagonists fears and mind, such as the
protagonist from the killing kind, and is not usually
as scare orientated or feature gore.There are
normally plot twists and often focuses on the
protagonist/characters inner conflict or state of
mind.Tension is normally not built through scares as
in most horror genres, but through atmospheric
music and sound effects, and a characters
psychology.
- Psychological horrors examples include ‘The
Shining’, ‘Pig’ and ‘The Omen’.
-We chose psychological horror as our genre
because we felt that it would be both challenging
and interesting, therefore we will be able to use all
of our skills to create an intriguing piece.
- The music would be a lot more fast paced to fit the
mood of the character it is following.
9. Slasher
- Slashers are often referred to due to the
intense, brutal violence and gore in a certain
film. Often, they refer to a murderer/serial
killer or psychopath hunting or chasing his
victims and kills them with intense graphic
violence and gore. Many of these films are
iconic and gain huge success such as the
Texas chainsaw massacre, pictured to the
left.
- Examples of Slasher films include the ‘Texas
Chainsaw Massacre’, ‘Friday the 13th’ and
‘Maniac’
- Although this will not be our main theme,
we decided to use certain elements from this
genre as we would like to include some form
of murderer.
