Conventions of the horror genre

The horror genre has many conventions which are easily seen by the audience. There are certain aspects of a horror film which we would expect to see when going to watch a horror film, however there are many sub genres within the horror genre including fantasy, supernatural, gore and thriller. As far as settings are concerned there are a lot of very predictable places which do tend to get reused often. These include homes known to be haunted, using a lot of scenes in basements and attics or perhaps an abandoned mental asylum. Other places include graveyards, places of worship, or towns and villages isolated in the middle of nowhere.

In order to establish a genre through a moving image many technical codes are used. Camerwork is a main aspect which helps to reinforce the 'theme' or 'mood' or a certain take. For example a canted angle can help to make the scence look distorted. Also if there is a clip of the victim from a high angle it can make them look very inferior to what ever is after them, or a low angle can make the antagonist look superior to the victim. During chase scenes or when the victim is running for help many short cuts will be used to make the effect of the speed up of time and this also helps the scene to come across more jumpy.

Iconography is a key part in any genre. In horror the colours red and black are very influential - red representing blood, evil and danger and black portraying death. When the lighting for a scene is dark you expect there to be danger and trouble where as if the lighting is high key the audience feel more at ease and wouldn't expect something bad to happen in that scene. Mise-en-scene refers to what objects are present in the scene. In horrors there are many knives, guns, weponary, blood, objects of religion and fire. 

The narrative structure in the horror genre usually follows the 'classic realist' structure. This includes the general stages : normality - enigma - path to resolution - closure. However throughout the structure they can be many 'false closures'. There is often two females in the female yet only one tends to make it to the end.

Character types in horrors tend to be very predictable. There will almost always be a victim and a villian. There also tends to be a girl who gets killed off mid film. Generally this girl will be rebelious and may have partaken in negative acts during the film so far so example drug use or sexual acts. Any police or law enforcement will tend to be rather useless and not be any help to the victims, either not believing the call for help is a joke from teens or not turn up till the last minute - where there help is too late.

Themes within horrors will usually include one or more of the following:
- religion
- science which has got out of control
- natural vs unnatural
- evil within someone