Horror genre

Codes and Convention of Horror films:

• Low key lightening, to set the haunted affect, and make it look dark and mysterious
• Broken/abandoned homes

• Creepy girl who comes back from the dead.
• 3 act narrative structure
• Dominant representation: male villain, female victim
• Binary opposition e.g. Good and evil.
• A lot of use of close up shots and low angles, to show there facial expressions
• Usually based on a true story, to scare the audience and to make them believe in spiritual things
• Usually a women in the bathroom/a shower scene
• Creepy non-diegetic music
• Zombies turn up at unusual times
• Getting mysterious phone calls
• Young innocent teen’s characters used, to haunt the protagonist
• Being home alone

Target audience
The target audience for a horror film, is for the age range from 16-30. I have chosen this age range because the convention in which are included in a horror film include dark, mysterious locations, which is very stereotypical start for a horror film, and automatically gives the audience the sense of the horror genre as these are typical found in those film, so the audience will be familiar. Sometimes another convention could be based on a true story, which will grab the audience attention thinking that is a story that has already happened and it something to relate to as the audience as it has happened in real life. Also another convention is that there is usually a child involved usually apart of the horror genre, as they are a part of scaring the audience, as in horror films children are either shown as innocent characters being haunted or compelled by a ghost or something which is spiritual. which lead onto another convention is that most horror films have a lot of spiritual things like ghosts, witches, vampires in the film to grab the audiences interest as they may believe in spiritual events or they just want a bit of a scare. From the pearl and Dean website we see that from the figures of horror films, we are shown that the audience that went to see this particular genre of film which range from 15-45 as with the most popular age group of 15-24, with 57%. This tells us that these types of films would appeal to more younger audience as they may feel more interested in it as they want a bit of a scare, are it may have been suggested as one of the popular film during the time. Also from this it shows us that more males went to watch the drag me to hell film than women. Which shows a typical convention of horror film as men are usually targeted for this type of genre. Another feature which is included from this is that class wise, mostly lower class went to watch this film.