Horror Movie Conventions and Cliches

Horror Movie Conventions and Cliches

The location of a typical horror movie will usually be set in an isolated location or small communities. A lot of the time these settings consist of a dark past, like if the horror was set in a house - its previous owners may of been murdered or there was paranormal activity which may be the reason why the place is abandoned or they put the home up for sale. Cabins, alleyways, farms, anywhere dark and somewhere were stupid teenagers would think its a bright idea to go in will be the typical horror movie setting. Going on about the stupid teenagers, the typical horror movie characters are usually these types of people. If we're on about an abandoned location, there is almost always a group of teens thinking it would be fun to 'investigate' the area, only to find their 'tragic' fate - I say tragic, sometimes (a lot of the time) some of the characters are so stupid, they almost deserve to die. For example the group will usually consist of the big 'jock' who is usually so up himself he thinks he's invincible, the dumb blonde cheerleader who ends up getting someone killed or trapped because they didn't understand what they had to do or we're just being plain stupid. Then you have the 'normal' boy and girl who actually think pretty much for the whole group and try to keep everyone alive - these two are usually the ones who end up surviving, or at least one of them do.

In different horror styles there are different types of people, it's thankfully not always just teenagers, however the reason why having teenagers as the protagonists are so popular is because the majority of the audience for horror films usually are teenagers, in which case this makes the movies more relatable to them. Normal families who move into a new house which turns out to be haunted is again a popular character selection for horror movies.
Now we've spoken about the usual protagonists of horror films, lets go onto the usual 'villains' of this popular genre. A lot of the time the antagonist of the film is either a mutated freak or a evil entity (demons) that haunts the protagonist and will most of the time end in an exorcism. There are other antagonists such as zombies, creepy possessed children, dolls, psychopaths etc.

The themes of horror movies usually consist of Good versus Evil, Religion, Supernatural, Zombie apocalypses, Insanity and many others. Religion is one of the more popular themes as they include demons and exorcists, a very popular and successful movie that based around this film was "The Exorcist" which is known as one of the scariest films of all time.