Ben Grant's Horror Blog: September 2015

The horror genre has been around for many years and there have been many theorists that have come up with ideas that not only help create horror movies, but all films in general. There are five theorists that will be explored in this essay and the way that they apply to my movie trailer.

Firstly, Metz is a theorist that suggested there are 4 stages of the genre development of a film, the experimental, classical, revisionist and parodic. These four stages are what a sub-genre goes through up until the post modernism time that we are in today, meaning that all films are being taken and recreated. The experimental stage is when the first movie of the genre is made, for example, the movie psycho was the first slasher ever created which is where my inspiration comes from. This is applied to my movie trailer as without the Metz creating these stages, I would not be able to gain ‘ingredients’ from each stage that would improve my trailer such as the masks, the murder weapons and the settings.

The second theorist is Altman who suggested that there are two pleasures when it comes to watching a horror movie, emotional pleasure and visceral pleasure. Emotional pleasure is when it generates a strong audience response, such as a mood or a feeling, this would be implied to movies from the J-horror genre but does not really apply to my slasher movie as it is more visceral pleasure. Visceral pleasure is the gut feeling you get within a movie, knowing that something is going to happen as well as jump scares making the experience like a roller coaster. I have applied Altman to my movie trailer as without him I would not be able to create visceral pleasure as I use jump scares within my trailer and gore with the slasher killing the victims.

Another theorist is Steve Neale who said that pleasure comes from repetition and difference as it stretches the genre to match the constant changing tastes of the audience. This would definitely apply to my horror trailer as I am taking parts from different movies to make one movie such as using masks which I got from the strangers and using a knife which was from the movie psycho. This shows that his theory has been acknowledged and used within my trailer meaning my movie should give the audience pleasure as it will be different but repeated.

Chandler is another theorist who simply said that all genres have sub-genres which is true as the horror genre has 9 sub-genres. My sub-genre is slasher which shows that his theory is applied to my movie therefore making it evidence that the theory is correct.

The main theorist is Burton who suggested everything to do with conventions and the characters within a novel. He said that there was always a protagonist, stock characters, stock situations, icons, background and themes in a movie. These all apply to my movie as the protagonists are a group of friends that go out on Halloween. The stock characters in my movie are the 5 typical ones which are the jock, the nerd, the fool, the slut and the final girl. The stock situations are the scenes in a horror movie that you always see such as getting dragged into the dark and being chased. These are all going to be in my horror trailer therefore it applies to the theorist. There are also many icons in my movie such as the knife, the mask, blood as well as the background being in typical horror settings meaning that Burton knew exactly what a horror movie should look like. My settings are in a car park, woods and a block of flats which shows that my trailer applied to his theory.