So hi again folks, if anybody actually bothers to read this thing but this whole entry is going to be about (as you can tell from the title) all about the typical synopsis of a horror movie meaning what kind of aspects you would expect to find in a usual horror movie, although that does not mean that you will find it in every horror movies, there are some movies, (like everything else) that do not follow the usual conventions of their chosen genre and chose to do something that would often be viewed as contreversial because it is breaking the norm of what you would usually expect to see from that particular genre.
Alright, so the first thing that we need to ask ourselves, is what kind of plot lines do we actually expect to see in a horror movie? Meaning, what makes a horror movie, a horror movie? And please bear in mind that this is different to what kind of conventions you would find in a horror/thriller altough they probably do interlink at some point.
Alrighty then! (I don't know why I just pictured Ace Ventura saying that...and if you haven't seen that movie, then by all means go and check it out, 'tis a good movie). Anyway, I digress. Sooooo according to my trusty friend the internet, most if not all horror movies would have some kind of fierce creature most of the time some kind of supernatural being, and what would make this even more fightenening is the fact that it being supernatural means that it is something that we as human beings will never be able to understand and it is part of the unknown, and this leads onto some pretty thought provoking questions, bet you didn't expect that from a horror movie now did you? Anyhow!
Something that directors and producers would do in order to make their creature even more frightening is that they would make it huge, savage and intelligent, and if it more intelligent than a human then that is absolutely terrifying. Another thing that I have already mentioned is that in order to make the film scary directors would use the supernatural and murderers. In some movies, they would have a human character, wearing a mask or scary clothes in order to commit the murders and because you were incapable of seeing the murderers face then that made it all the more effective, for example in A Nightmare On Elm Street our main (and only villain) had a badly burned face which was obsucred in shadow for the majority of the movie making him an even more menacing villain.
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| Freddie Krueger- 'A Nightmare On Elm Street'. |
Now, if we were to look at a typical synopsis of a movie which is all about a masked killer then your typical plot line would be about a group of teenagers, (maybe even young adults) who get off by the murderer one by one, sometimes but not always leaving a sole survivor who goes on to tell his story. Now usually we don't know why the killer is commiting these crimes until usually the very end of the movie when we get our revelation, but its usually for revenge. Durnig the duration of the movie (not the best phrasing in the world, I know) the audience always gets convinced that they know who the murderer is, but then in the end they always end up getting proved wrong; and something else that is also considered normal for that branch of horror movies is that there is some kind of conflict towards the end of the movie.
If we were to look at Scary Movie for example, then right at the very end of the movie our main character of Cindy realises that she has to defeat our villain all by herself and bearning in mind that this is a parody of many diferent movies (altough focusing mainly on Scream) right at the very end of the movie when she thinks that she has defeated him, she calls the cops but then when they go to get his body and arrest him they find out that he isn't there. *Dramatic music should be inserted here*
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| Scream Masks, or rather the evolution of Scream Masks. |
Another thing that we need to ask oursevles while talking about this is what would make a horror movie successful? In other words, what would be likely to scare the living be-jesus out of your audience? Apart from blood and gore that is. A well known formulea that they use in Hollywood is something as follows: a person who is cut away from the rest of society falls into despair and goes on to seek revenge on the people that made him unhappy.
Another thing that you would be likely to see in all horror movies would be the fact that our good guys, whom we usually emphasise with have to set out to defeat that horrible baddy who's trying to create a decent plot line, and this a pretty standard plot line for any horror movie. This means that this baddy that they have to kill could be in their heads, it could be real, or supernatural and they will also have to get rid of the accomplises of the baddie, therefore building the tension of the scene and making the audience want to know what the outcome of the final battle will be.
The next thing that will be found in every single horror movie out there, is our 'who dies next' scenario. This is pretty straightforward I think without me needing to explani but I'll do it anyway. This is a pretty common element in the Teen Slasher franchise and this basically means that the audience has to guess which one of our lovely group of characters will be killed off next, and, like falling domeoes who is doing the killing, how they die who will survive? This is seen in every single horror movie but a very bad example of how not to create a decent horror can be seen in the Final Destination movies, which are so bad they're funny to watch because they lack any kind of plot line or logic for that matter, but that's beside the point and every single movie is the same.
The final thing which might be able to be found in some horror movies is 'doing the right thing' and this is mostly where our lovable character gets thrown into a situation where he has to pick doing something that will help him survive or doing the right thing, even if means that he has to lose some of his friends along the way which is a basis for some horror movies. Just to round off, here are some nice little images to haunt your nightmares for a few days: ;) Here's a fun little game you can play, (excluding the labelled pictures and final destination) try and guess which movies these are from! No really, I'm curious if you'll get them!
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