1. Horror films are used to create a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on
the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that make the viewer jump
or scare the viewer through the means of the supernatural and death.
Horror films deal with the viewer's nightmares, hidden worst fears and fear of the
unknown.
There are many things the genre of Horror focuses on such as blood and gore, serial
killers, torture, haunted houses, vampires and cannibals. It usually is some unnatural
occuring in the everyday world.
There are many sub-genres of horror such as
• Zombie Horror (such as Dawn of the Dead, Resident Evil)
• Slasher Horror (such as Halloween, Scream, Childs Play)
• Splatter Horror (such as Wolf Creek, Saw, Hostel)
• Science Fiction Horror (such as Alien, Pitch Black, Apollo 18)
• Psychological Horror (such as Blair Witch Project, The Ring)
• Natural Horror (such as Jaws, Snakes on a Plane, Lake Placid)
• Comedy Horror (such as Scary Movie, Shaun of the Dead)
• Gothic Horror (such as The Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein)
• Body Horror (such as The Fly, Rosemary’s Baby)

2. As a group we are looking into the sub genre of Slasher Horror. A slasher film is a type of
horror film that typically involves a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of
victims in a graphic or violent way, often with a “weapon” such as a knife or axe.
Slasher films usually have a psychopathic killer who’s identity is known to the viewer, either
openly or wearing a mask or the identity is not known and the film employs a “whodunit”
angle to keep an audience in suspense.
There is lots of characteristics specific to a slasher horror film such as the characters. There
is always a hero/heroine which is usually the protagonist, the main focus of the killer and
always notices things straight away.
They normally are the survivor aswell. Victims which in most slasher films are high school
students. There usually is adults that are spoke about or seen on screen for a few minutes
but are always unaware that their children are being attacked.
Also the location is a main convention as it usually is a
forest/camps, small towns, islands ; somewhere isolated where
it is too weak to make a call or hard to escape.

3. One of the first slasher films which could be argued is a film called
Thirteen Women (1932) Thirteen friends who were members of a
girl's college sorority, all write to a clairvoyant who by mail sends
each a horoscope foreseeing doom. However, the clairvoyant is
under the sway of Ursula who was a student at the college and was
snubbed by the other women because of her mixed-race heritage.
She seeks revenge by tricking the women into killing themselves or
each other. The victims are killed one by one until one survives (a
typical convention of a slasher film).
However, the first main well known slasher film is Alfred Hitchcock’s
Psycho (1960) the film is about a secretary who is hiding in a motel
after embezzling money from her boss. She is spied on and then
eventually killed by the motel owner Norman Bates who has a split
personality.

4. The main era of the slasher film was the late 1970s and the 1980s
with the introduction of films such as Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday
13th, Halloween, Sorority Row and Prom Night which went on to have
remakes and sequels.
They went on to create the typical conventions of high school students
being used and the psychopathic killer. This era went on to establish
Michael Myers, Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhees as well known
movie figures in the horror genre.
Audiences started to become bored of the typical structured formula
of a slasher film and paid more attention to different inventive ways
for victims to be killed leading to the increase in special effects and
graphic deaths as seen in Childs Play and Nightmare on Elm Street.
After this era slasher films started to become more comedic and less
realistic as the “slasher film” developed.

5. At the start of the 1990s the slasher horror sub genre
started to become more and more noticed on a comedic
level and not as seriously as it was first took in the 70s.
Audiences became increasingly bored of the now typical
teenage slasher film.
In 1996, Wes Craven developed the movie Scream; the
film still played on the typical conventions and made the
usual mistakes but wasn’t as serious which the audiences
liked.
Scream became a success for the slasher film sub genre
as they used well known actors and actresses, more
humour and less gore. As a result from the 1990’s
onwards more and more remakes of older slasher horror
films are coming back into mainstream such as
Halloween H20, Jason X, Nightmare on Elm Street and
My Bloody Valentine 3D. Also, as Scream was a success
Wes Craven has gone on to create 3 other Scream
movies Scream 2, Scream 3 and Scream 4.