Conventions of Horror Films

Choose ONE convention across at least TWO movies. Describe how this convention is used in this film. Use specific examples (textual evidence: techniques, details) and refer to your notes as necessary.

The convention of a female victim is used across the board in horror films. Two such examples are 1960's Psycho and 1996's Scream. In Psycho, Marian Crane is our female victim. Marian, the lead character in the start of the film, ends up dying within the first half hour. This is used to surprise the audience and lead them to believe that anything could happen. Before she died, Marian committed many acts which are known to be fatal acts in horror films as they ultimately lead to death as they are seen as morally wrong. In this film, Marian stole 40,000 dollars from her employer and was also having motel sex out of wedlock. A similar example was used in Scream. Drew Barrymore, one of the film's biggest names, was killed at the very start. Perhaps this was an idea borrowed from Psycho? In Scream, though, we see many more examples of female victims, Tatum is brutally murdered by Ghostface in the garage door and Sidney, the protagonist, is another victim of Ghostface's cruelty. Sidney is taunted by creepy, threatening phone calls from Ghostface who is seemingly stalking her as he always knows where she is and is also attacked by him on numerous occasions.

The female victim was used in Scream as a technique to shock the audience into believing that anything could and would happen in this film. Similar reasons are probably accounted for it being used in Psycho, also. In Psycho, Marian was the lead character and so it was very shocking and unusual for the audience to see the main star die such a short way through the film as it strayed from what traditionally took place in horror films. It reveals that both directors, in particular Alfred Hitchcock as he did this before his time, were ambitious to take such a risk and also that they were motivated and creative thinkers that just wanted to make the best of their films. The way that Hitchcock chose to show the scene of Marian's murder was also very revolutionary and has come to be known as the infamous shower scene. This scene was a classic example of the slasher violence that is very common in horror films. How it is interpreted, whether in a sexual manner or otherwise, is neither here nor there as the scene is one of the most famous in the horror genre and is used to cause the audience to think in a moralistic sense, that Marian is being punnished for her crimes. The audience's expectations in the film would have been very different to what actually took place. The money Marian stole which was the heart of her moral down-fall was killed off with Marian. What had been, up until that point, seemingly the main storyline, went down with Marian's body in her car.

Audiences of Psycho were warned before viewing it that something very shocking happened at the start of the movie. This made the audience a lot more skeptical and caused the mood to be a lot more ominous. Though the fact that such a famous actress' character was killed off so early in the film did not hinder Psycho's reception from the audience. After Psycho, the shower scene was altered slightly and used in countless horror films. In Scream, because another famous actress' character was killed so brutally at the start of the movie, even though she was not the primary character, it made the audience a lot more cautious and suspicious of the events to come in the movie. I think that the directors have used similar techniques because it had found to be a successful one and effectively sets up the rest of the movie. The fact that in both movies the killer goes on to strike down other dominant characters is also an effective technique as it scares the audience. I think that Wes Craven does not kill off Sidney's character as a lot of other characters die and he moulds the film so that the audience grows a strong attachment to Sidney which causes them to fear for her and hope for her survival which keeps them enthralled with the film. Both directors have used the convention of the female victim to reflect the way that audiences and their expectations and so to keep their audiences interested. The effects on society of watching these films is that it can cause them to reflect on the own moralistic actions because the films imply that if you commit sin then you will come to a grim ending, and also to wonder about the people around them and other members of society as in both films the killers are seemingly harmless characters. Experts have hailed Psycho as the first modern horror film and the mother of the 'slasher' sub-genre. Scream was a turning point in terms of casting for the horror genre which had previously involved relatively unknown actors. It was largely accepted with positive critical response as it provided a shift from the teen slasher films of the 1980s. Kevin Thomas of The Los Angeles Times called Scream "a bravura, povocative sendup of horror pictures" and complimented the film for being "scary and gruesome" while avoiding a sense of "morbidity". Which is why these films are both revolutionary and popular. Not because they're original but because they combine the elements of a horror film in an original way.