Opening Slides Horror, by definition, is a genre of fiction which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten, scare, disgust, or startle its audience by inducing feelings of horror and fear.
As a genre, horror is there to make a film unenjoyable yet shockingly enjoyable for target audiences. There are several different subgenres within the mass horror genre that have different target audiences depending on what other genre their hybrid is with. Getting scared and raising the heartrate is thrilling and many do find this feeling to be enjoyable. My chosen genre is horror because of the effect it leaves on the audience and how it can have a long-term effect on any viewer when done successfully. The reason for my inclusion of the directors is due to the fact that I believe horror audiences are more likely to see a ‘big name’ horror film from a director that they trust to create a good, convincing horror.
Psychological Slides Psychological horror movies are the most common horror subgenre to date. The consistency of storylines, characters and overall plot development is able to successfully play on the fears of their target audience. They play on common fears and what is considered ‘scary’ at the time of the release. The Shining: The book adaptations are probably the most effective horror movies as the books already tend to have a fan base – especially if the author is well known. The Shining creates a unique, cinematic experience through its ostensive use of cinematography and incredible acting. Misery: Another Stephen King adaptation. Misery follows an author who is looked after by a fan after he loses control of his car, being a Stephen King novel, things go south fast when she finds out that he has killed off the title character. The mental stability of Annie represents this as a psychological horror due to the notion when she deals with Paul. Blumbler and Katz’s theory can be applied when speaking about this film to other people because of its shocking material. This is a successful piece of cinema because of the attraction coming from fans of King and horror put together.
Action Slides Action horror movies tend to be popular with audiences that enjoy the excitement and intensity of something attacking the character’s that they witness on screen. They attract a hybrid audience of action and horror fans with the intended dominant reading being conveyed through the stereotypical conventions used in both films. Resident Evil: With the franchise being so big within the gaming and movie industry, the series was largely popular with action horror fans. The success of the first film spawned five continuations of the series that were slashed by critics and fans for not being like the original game – however, standalone horror fans enjoyed the film as it was. Hansel & Gretel: This adaptation is a new take on the classic fairy tale. Being a story that many know of, Witch Hunters was successful within the box office in regards to what it picked up financially. Fans who grew up with Hansel and Gretel would have been interested in seeing what a horror director could do with the classic, this is due to the fact that audiences enjoy seeing original ideas being rehashed in a way that interprets them in a unique style. As Hansel and Gretel is a beloved title, it is more likely to bring in a base audience because of its popularity.
Animated Horror This hybrid genre of horror is usually targeted at a younger audience which is what makes the animated horror genre different. The images displayed are usually more unsettling and disturbing in order to get a reaction out of the audience in response for them seeing a usually conventional genre of children’s film style get an older make over from the horror film makers. Monster House: Monster House is a motion capture animation film and one of the first at that. Because of the way that the film was created, this new type of animation was interesting to new audiences. Monster House ranks at a PG rating which lowered its audience substantially with some parents suggesting that the film be raised to a 12A. Because of this, the film was always going to do better when it came to DVD production. ParaNorman: The film revolves around a young boy who can see ghosts, he ends up finding a book that can raise the dead. Being Laika, the film already had an existing hype and fan base to work with before the movie had even come out. Because of the controversy with one of the main protagonists being homosexual, parents of the children who saw the movie weren’t too happy because of the questions they were asked after the viewing.
Slasher Horror In the 80s/90s especially, slasher was popular. Many young adults who were able to view the films flocked to cinemas to get a ‘gore fix’. These are majorly known for scaring audiences through jump scares and high tension, it’s easy to see why the slasher subgenre is the most profitable of all the subgenres. Halloween: In John Carpenter’s filmography legacy, he has created masterpieces in the horror genre. The non-diegetic soundtrack and visual effects drew in a wide audience and still remains a classic in the recent 21st century. Carpenter’s slasher film is one that audiences received well after its release, giving Michael Myers a name in the iconic horror antagonists. Sleepaway Camp: The film is about a young girl who is sent to Camp Arawak by her aunt, in order for her to gain social skills that she lacks. However, the conventional events of several murders occur and no one knows who’s doing it. Even though the film is lesser known, it still goes down as a classic. The ending of the film goes down as one of the most unexpected horror movie twist endings. This got people talking about the film after the credits rolled, the audience reception only strengthened after this due to the effect of the twist and the recent release of 1980s slasher flick, Friday the 13th being a hit within the time.
Comedy Horror The comedy horror subgenre is an acquired taste that only generally appeals to a younger audience demographic. They tend to parody popular films which draws the audience from other films that are involved in the films spoof. Scary Movie: Low-rated and slashed by critics, Scary Movie only appeals to a niche audience who enjoy crude humour mixed with explicit ‘take-it-as-it-is’ materials from the horror genre. The art of comedy in this hybrid is generally overlooked by critics yet continue to attract audiences. Scary Movie itself brought in enough money for four feature films following the first one. The Final Girls: This film is about a young woman and her group of friends who, when a fire breaks out at a theatre showing a 80s slasher, are pulled into the film and are forced to live it out until the credits roll. With its protagonists being normal, everyday people of the public they are easy for the audience to be able to associate themselves with – choosing a character that they connect with because the actors make them seem so real. The fantasy element will attract an audience through its use of genre convergence in regards to elements that coincide with horror, comedy and some of the conventions of fantasy movies.
Sci-Fi Horror Usually about survival, these films usually take place within space or in a space station of some sort. They also are brilliant at building an intense atmosphere. Alien: Ridley Scott’s Alien bounced off of the back of the Star Wars film. Test audiences for the film were used to light-hearted sci-fi movies and were unexpectedly thrown into a film that was intense and shocking even to a target audience. The following slide shows the positive negative reaction to a good, shocking horror movie. The Mist: About a supernatural mist that traps several people in a supermarket over the course of two days. Because the film was originally a story from the book Skeleton Crew by Stephen King, fans of King’s work will be drawn to the film in order to witness the story they know turn to the big screen. These fans will merge with a niche horror audience who are immediately attracted to the film due to its genre and will watch for the ‘fear factor’.
Gothic Horror Around since the 17th century, popularised by Mary Shelley and classic works by Bram Stoker, gothic horror is one of the most underrated subgenres yet also the most atmospheric that places its audiences in a form of isolation. Rebecca: Rebecca is said to be one of the first gothic horror films to birth the slasher genre at the same time. Hitchcock wasn’t all that popular at the time but after viewing the suspenseful Rebecca, audiences who enjoyed what they saw would have been sure to look out for other works by Alfred Hitchcock. The Woman In Black: Arthur Kipps is a solicitor who travels to a remote village on a case, this involves him staying in the man’s house. The classic book brings its shocking imagery to the big screen building an atmosphere within the audience who view it. This is successful when creating a movie of the gothic genre because it’s what people expect from a project that labels itself as ‘gothic’.
Supernatural Horror In recent years, supernatural horrors have been popular. The majority of audience members will read a supernatural horror film in the way that the director intended it to be read. Paranormal Activity: Advertised as one of the scariest movies because of its element of realism. The target audience for the supernatural horror franchise were obviously attracted to the uniqueness of the film because this juxtaposes normality. Sinister: This is about a family who moves into a house that some tapes have been left in the attic, the father of the family further investigates the occurrences of the tapes. Fans of horror films across the world built hype for the film and were pleased by what they finally saw. The benefit of the film being produced by the producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious was that those films brought with them an existing fan base that extended out to other subgenres.
Found Footage Horror Found footage horror is undoubtedly one of the newest subgenres of horror on the cinematic scene with The Blair Witch Project properly kicking off the subgenre in the late 90s and early noughties. Unfriended: As well as being the first of its kind, it also sparked a hype the found footage subgenre hadn’t seen since the release of The Blair Witch Project in 1999. The trailer spread virally and gained success on its opening weekend as it earnt over $15 million. As of recent, the film is a standalone and has no plans for a sequel because the first film was enough for audiences to stomach from the view of protagonist. REC: REC is a Spanish film that follows Angela and Pablo who are journalists. They’re sent to the fire station to document an average day but the fire fighters are called to an apartment block. There, they are quarantined because of the horror that has broken out within the block. This film flies under the radar of many film goers. The director’s intention for the film was for the audience to feel involved in the journey that Angela and the others undergo within the building, this was successful. The audience is made to feel like they too are being hunted by the presence within the film’s narrative and I believe that this film is successful in creating this illusion.
The success of horror films generally comes from the hype built by the marketing campaigns that tend to go viral via social websites. Horror’s success doesn’t always come from the marketing but instead something within the brain that has a need for excitement and stimulation. It is said that if an individual leads a relatively relaxed and uneventful lifestyle that they will have a craving for fear and wish more than anything to be scared, as they get older, this craving deteriorates.
You’re Next is a 2011 horror/thriller directed by Adam Wingard and written by Simon Barrett. The film’s marketing stood out to me when I was researching for horror movies in the way that it was able to successfully single out and develop on an audience of film goers. They used trailers, hijacked posters, social media and Omegle in order to uniquely promote their film. The effect these campaigns have on the audience is that they are different and are rarely done. Normal horror films usually rely on the success of making the trailer look horrifying to attract an audience but Lionsgate market differently which is what made You’re Next a viral marketing campaign which would inspire and change the way that films are marketed towards their intended target audience. The posters left an enigma code within the audience as to who the killers where and why they were masked, this could lead onto whom of which they were after which creates a suspense that horror movies should be able to create – connoting a successful horror campaign.
The target audience for horror films usually consist of the example given to the left of this slide on my presentation. Nowadays, audiences are becoming more accepting and take pride in challenging themselves in order to prove that horror films don’t scare them. Therefore, horror films appeal to a wider, mass audience of mixed demographics. Majority of horror fans tend to be creative, imaginative and open-minded when it comes to accepting what they are seeing on the screen in the preferred reading that the director intended. They also watch horror films for the same reason.
Traditionally, the male is supposed to be ‘buff’ and strong when it comes to facing fears and dangerous situations and the female meek and frail on the opposing spectrum. However, over recent years, females have been known to observe horror films for the same challenge. . Ages, occupations and the continued chain of written and theorized audience demographics have continued to change and evolve audiences for horror movies over the recent years in regards to how an audience member views a horror movie as an individual. The minds of children and teenagers are different to the mind of a middle aged person and the elderly. This is related to the way an audience demographic views a horror film.
As an individual, we all have different interests and attitudes to certain things that exist within the cinematic world, this is because our minds are different in many ways. Whilst we may have the same interests and attitudes towards a certain thing, everyone’s brain is different; this means that we view and read horror films differently. The psychographics are more personal to one’s own when it comes to audiences in general.
The uses and gratifications theory is important in regards to determining which audience applies to what category. There are four main sections; surveillance, identification, diversion and entertainment. Surveillance is where the audience gain an educational value out of the film they have just viewed. Identification is when the audience align themselves with the main protagonist and relate to them in a way that they wish to see them make it to the end of the narrative. Diversion is when it allows the audience to escape from the reality that they live in – this is the most common gratification of the four. Finally, the entertainment element is when they just view the film for pure entertainment, acting as a passive audience member as they watch the film.
There are three readings that an active audience member can reveal when it comes to watching a film. Dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings are the said three. The dominant is where the audience view the film exactly how the director envisioned. Negotiated is when the audience try to oppose the dominant reading yet they have a mixed attitude to what they have just seen – thus being the most common in the horror film industry. The oppositional reading is when the audience completely disagree and oppose what they have just viewed. These are important to the horror genre because of how much pressure is on a horror film maker to create the perfect film that applies to audiences of all wants and needs from a scary movie.
An audience is made up of individual people with independent minds who see things differently to others – therefore it is difficult and almost impossible in order to create a film that gains the dominant reading across the board. The hypodermic needle states that the media injects its audience with ideas, messages and beliefs that attempt to make an audience see a certain film a certain way. This is common when referring to horror audiences as these audiences should come out of a scary movie satisfied that they have been scared which was the ultimate goal of the director. This is an element of the aftermath of the dominant reading presented by Stuart Hall. Horror movies can be both accepted and declined by audiences of different opinions and views. For example, a film such as The Human Centipede will appeal to a younger audience but will disgust an older one.
This is a video presented by film critic, Chris Stuckmann who, within the video, runs through the issues that horror movies face today. He analyses the issues of audience expectation and highlights what they now find ‘scary’. In this, he vividly analyses Oculus and the Babadook as well as films by James Wan and their effects on a modern audience.
Relationships between the general public and movies have always been complex and complicated – some enjoy a film, others oppose it. Because of tropes and clichés appearing in almost every horror film across the board of horror movies, audiences are right to be sceptical about the films they pay their worked money to see. They don’t want to disappointed or let down by their investment within the film as they paid to gain the fear factor that horror is supposed to deliver. Horror films are more likely to get bad reviews than good reviews which is what causes the relationship to deteriorate and collapse when it comes to the audience generally enjoying horror films.
In many horror films, if not all, audiences are aligned with the characters within its either linear or fragmented narrative. Either way, the audience is positioned differently depending on their psychographics. I previously referenced active and passive audiences, here is where I explain them. Active audiences are people who respond and act upon the media that they have been given by the director to praise the film and spread the word as to what the film was about and why they liked it either face to face or on social media. Passive audiences are the opposite of the active members of an audience, this means that they accept what they are seeing as well made yet the film doesn’t have any active effect on the audience that makes them talk about it after the experience of viewing the film. The following video is about an experiment that was conducted to understand a social learning theory where children were shown a doll being kicked and punched, this was able to determine the different ways in which an audience interprets different subjects and scenarios.
So what’s the appeal? Many enjoy the adrenaline rush that comes with watching a film within the horror genre. Like all films, events and occurrences happen that people wouldn’t see in everyday life. From a young age, parents hide horror films from their children with the intention of keeping them at bay form nightmares and visual childhood trauma, however, the older these children get the more curious they are going to be when it comes to viewing a horror movie. Because they have been kept from such a movie, they will be more likely to wish to watch and experience a horror film. Because of this the appeal only grows stronger with age. A quote from Warren Ellis’ essay about violent fiction stated “Fiction is how we both study and de-fang our monsters. To lock violent fiction away, or to close our eyes to it, is to give our monsters and our fears undeserved power and richer hunting grounds.” Finally, The Exorcist is a 1973 film which is infamous for its effect. The screening gathered thousands of people in several sold-out performances on every cinema that it was released on. Several audience members ended up walking out of the theatre claiming that it was too scary for them to go back in, some fainted, many vomited. An effect on an audience this big has never happened before and will more than likely never happen again with people emerging from the cinema after the film saying “It’s something I never saw in my whole entire life. It’s something different, and I went to a lot of movies but I’ve never seen anything like this time myself.”