This document outlines several key conventions of horror movies, including iconography like weapons and demons; stylistic elements like lighting, music and camera work; common settings like houses and underground locations; typical narratives involving killers, fear, and trapped characters; character archetypes like teenagers and maniacs; and popular themes involving gore, survival and religion. The conventions establish familiar tropes that set the mood and drive suspense in horror films.

1. Horror Conventions
By Thomas Beckensall

2. Iconography
• Axe These are props or objects in the
• butcher knife scene that make the feeling of the
• Blades movie appear more dramatic and
• Spikes slower, for suspense.
• Saw blades
• Murders
• Demons
• Pickaxe
• Haunted house

3. Style
• Lighting
• Shaken camera
• Dramatic music
• Montage
• Match on action to weapons or enemy
The styles of the movies set the horror
genre as the lighting plays a major part of
the film as it gives certain points of interest
within the scene.

4. setting
• Any building during a natural disaster
• The title could be the place of the films setting
• Dark places
• Houses as it is breaking an entering
• Underground reminds the viewer of hell
The setting of a horror could be classed as
iconography but the setting is classed as
the estate or town that makes the mood of
the movie more apparent.

5. Narrative
• The mysterious killer
• Fear of the unknown
• Claustrophobia
• Hallucination
• Trapped
• Freedom but still in danger
The classic narrative structure of horror
movies normally ends with the harmless
virgin girl being the last survivor and ends
up killing the demon or beast.

6. Characters
• Jigsaw
• Teenagers
• Business men
• Family
• Tourists
• Maniac
• Curious character
The characters are normally split into the
vulnerable and the attacker which can
change around as a twist which is like the
character has been transmuted throughout
the story. Characters are the main part of the
fear of the film as living things are the main
thing that plays with the viewers emotion.

7. Themes
• Physiological
• Gore
• True story
• Monster
• Religious
• survival
The themes are the basis of the movie
as it makes everything originate around
that one main idea. Themes attract a
certain audience who would be
attracted to that type of theme.