Research: Characteristics of a horror film

To research into the horror genre, I have conducted some primary research observations into the types of characteristics that seem to be present in a number of horror genre films:

1) CHARACTERS -  these characters are those you would expect to find in the genre:

The Antagonist: this is the villain or bad character in the film, who terrorises the protagonist/friends/community, they usually use iconic weapons, such as, knifes and usually use brutal violence within horror films. An example of a Antagonist is presented in the image on the left, this is from the film 'Halloween'. This particular antagonist uses various weapons and violence to eliminate victims.

The Protagonist: the victim/good character this often a female character, also known as the ‘final girl’. This character is expected to last untill the end of the film and sometimes defeat the antagonist, so the protagonist must be brave and independent. An example of this is the film 'Creep', the final girl is portrayed as brave, idenpendant and ambitious. She attacks the antagonist and manages to escape from him.

The Helper: often the character that advices the protagonist but eventually does get killed by the antagonist to create tension within the film.

Monster Fodder/Stock Characters: these the victims of the victim/killer (antagonist) they are killed off to build tension the film and build a sense of terror. These are often called the stock characters who do not have much character development because they are killed off quickly.

2) ICONOGRAPHY- these are features that horror films used to make it easy for the audience to indentify what the genre is. These are often portrayed through icononic features, such as, knife and blood which the antagonist is responsible of.

3) SETTINGS- there are many types of settings that the horror genre uses, it is normally place in which is fearful and creates terror to people. For example a type of setting is an isolated one, this setting is a place which is hard for the protagonist to escape (such as The Strangers). Another example is a dystopian urban city where there has been some sort of disaster (such as 28 Days Later), it appears that often it is a city that has been deserted because of fears of a unseen menance (antagonist/s). This create uncertainty between protagonist and they often hide away to make plots to try and survive escape the city. These types of settings create tension towards the audience as these settings create the fear of the unknown.