A Media slideshow about how Vladimir Propp's character types relate to the films 'Orphan' and 'Paranormal Activity 2'.

2. Orphan is a film about a 33-year old woman who is posing as a little girl, Esther,
she is adopted by a family, and although her new mother has suspicions about her,
thinks that she’s just a little girl.
Her main goal in the film is to get rid of the mother and seduce the father. During
the film she kills a nun from the orphanage as the nun told her new parents that
weird things happen whenever Esther is around.
Near the end of the film when she tries to seduce her new father John- he rejects
her, causing her to go crazy and kills him.
The Mother, Kate, then returns home after receiving information that Esther is
actually 33-year-old Leena to help her husband. She finds him dead and has a
struggle with Leena before killing her after a fight in an iced over pond.

3. The Hero- Kate, the mother as
she is the one who knows
The Villain- Leena/Esther is the something is off about Esther
villain as she goes around from the beginning. She is also
killing people. In her life she the hero in the sense she kills
has killed nine people. Esther in the end.
The Helper- Sister Abigail
(the nun) tries to warn the
family about Esther, she is
then killed by Esther.
The Father- John. Esther’s new father.
This is not the classic father stereotype
but he cant see anything wrong with this
little girl and is convinced that Kate is
wrong about her. He is later killed by her,
probably because of his blindness to the The Donor- Daniel, Esther’s
situation. new brother, like Kate realises
there’s something wrong with
her new sister, she tries to kill
him later in the film by setting
fire to the tree house he’s in.

4. Paranormal Activity 2
The story revolves around Dan and Kristi’s family. Strange things
begin to happen around their house and to their new-born son, Hunter,
who is the first male born into the family since Kristi’s great
grandfather. Kristi is then attacked one day when Dan and Kristi’s
sister, Katie are at the vets with the family dog. Kristi has been
possessed and Dan enrols the help of their old housekeeper, Martine.
Martine tells Dan that he needs to transfer the demon to Katie, Kristi’s
sister- much to the objection to Ali, Dan’s daughter. Katie then
becomes the demon and weird things begin to happen around her
house, then one night she comes over to Kristi and Dan’s house and
them both, then disappearing with Hunter. Ali then returns from a
school trip and finds the dead bodies of her parents and Katie and
Hunter no where in sight.

5. The villain- The spirit/Ghost who
possessed the Katie and Hunter.
Also Katie would be the villain
because she killed two people and
abducted a baby.
The Helper-
Martine, the
The Hero- I housekeeper, she
suppose that helped Dan with
Dan would be the ridding Kristi of
the demon.
hero because he
ridded his wife of
Paranormal
the demon but he Activity 2
gave it to Katie
which isn’t very
hero like.
The Donor- Ali, she
contributes her opinion
and her worries about the
demon in her house.

6. Evaluation
Overall I think that Propp’s character types don’t really apply to my two
films, they don’t fit the type of film. I think that this would fit a typical
horror film but what I don’t think Vladimir Propp realised at the time was
that films come in all shapes and sizes, so although this may fit into
certain films, it is quite a small gap of them. It seems that his character
types are more old fashioned such as the ‘princess’ and the ‘princesses
father’ because nowadays in horror films women are a big part and aren't
always the damsel in distress anymore.
On the other hand some of his character types fit into my categories
such as villain and victim which are always there in a horror film, no
matter what.
So it seems that maybe a revised version for the horror genre would
have been better for these horror films.