Genre and Audience Analysis: VICIOUS

1. Genre Analysis
VICIOUS

2. Location
The audience in VICIOUS is established
through key features such as location.
We are shown an isolated house in an
empty street, which is a conventional
setting in the horror genre so horror fluent
fans will decode this setting as dangerous
and scary. The lighting in this setting is
low key, and audiences will connote this
with danger, so they know this genre is
horror and will therefore attract horror
fans.

3. Typography
The audience will decode this title as scary and match it to
the horror genre.

4. Stock Themes
1. Isolation - A main theme in most
horror movies is the main
character being isolated, and the
audience are shown this through
several longshots of the character
to reveal her surroundings. Horror
fluent audiences will decode this
isolation as a sign of danger to
come to the character.

5. Stock Themes
2. Low-key lighting - Darkness is
the most common fear for
audiences, and therefore horror
films will always use low-key
lighting to encode this fear.
Audiences decode this lighting as
dangerous and scary, so audiences
enjoy this as it gives them the
pleasure of being scared.

6. Stock Themes
3. Disruption - In every horror
film there is a distruption to
the character, and more
commonly it’s a demonic
being nowadays. Audiences
will decode this as scary and
dangerous towards the main
character/s.

7. Colours
All the colours in this short are
dark as horror audiences will
decode this as a common fear
(the dark) and that the setting is
dangerous. Horror audiences
will get pleasure out of these
colours as they know what they
represent and enjoy the aspect
of potential fear.

8. Sound
The use of silence builds suspense and
tension, so horror fluent audiences
recognise this and realise something
bad is about to happen, and therefore
the audience will get pleasure out of this
silence and tension building. The
eerie/atmospheric non-diegetic sound is
read by audiences as a sign of danger,
so horror fluent audiences will get
pleasure out of this as they will decode
these sounds as dangerous.