Genre Research (Horror)

          Horror is one of the most popular genres in the world, it’s liked by many specially around fall season. The horror genre is known for obviously have jump scares and being scary. This genre is widely known all over the world, with its famous movies like The Conjuring, The Shining, Scream and also Psycho and way more. The reason we have these amazing scary films that we like to watch to get a scream out is because of the very talented directors, John Carpenter, James Wan or Wes Craven. All known for their amazing films and hard work and creativity. 

          Now, this genre is for all ages but mostly targeted for 15 to 24 year olds. One of the most famous horror films of all times is be The Exorcist (1973). In the Exorcist we see that it’s mainly targeted to teens and young adults, this film is very popular for its very good acting, storyline and filming. In the exorcist like every other horror movie, they go for low lighting and over the shoulder shots with some low angles and close ups, this is to create the suspensions of ‘who’s behind them’ or also to get a clear view of what’s on screen.  Horrors movies are to be filmed in dark settings specially in the climax. This is for the suspense and entregue for the audience, which is what people mainly look for in the horror genre. Majority like having a jump scare or an extreme plot twist, so that’s what makes horror movies, horror movies, the fact that it has that included. The techniques used in films are very important but in horror movies it extremely important, they way a camera does pan or shifts to simulate suspense, or the dark lighting or the angles and shots used, all of that has a lot to do with how the story goes and how good a movie could turn out to be. For example, if we were to take away the slow pans or shifts of the camera in some scenes it would immediately take away the suspense which plays a big part on the films in that genre. 

          Even though, technique has a lot to do with the popularity and good of a film and another big step is marketing. Marketing is what is used many to grabs the audiences attention before the movie is released.  A great example could be for the new movie Smile 2, the movie consists of these creepy people smiling and the marketing team has done an amazing job, since we’ve seen all over our social media how scary people would stand without moving and just smile, no blinking, no moving, nothing. This has made people go crazy, since it’s really scary to see a random person stand and stare with a big smile on their face. Aside from interactional marketing there’s also online marketing. Many films use famous actors to be in their scary movie to get mover views and market the movie more. As the sequence of Scream wasn’t continuing to be as popular as before and at the time the famous actors Jenna Ortega was, the film producers decide to have her in the new movie. This made bank for them, the marketing was great since she had been in the peak of her career this benefited a lot the producers. Another thing could be the design of the head board. When walking into a movie theater we see multiple boards of movies and for horror what mainly caught about eyes is a dark setting, maybe some blood and a known actress or something that’s pops out to the human eye. 

           Lastly, this genre is very popular and without its important techniques it wouldn’t be what it is today. Some examples of films that did good in both marketing and techniques could be The conjuring, as it released more films it did good and people liked it, the marketing was great since also it was based on true events. When the conjuring came out many first learned what an Ouiji board was, and stores started selling them, this helped gain money and also views for the movie. A film that did very good with marketing again is Smile, or also any horror sub genre that has to do with clowns. In 2016, the famous killer clowns were scaring people off and promoting movies of clowns that were at their peak at the time. When it came to selling ‘merch’ or things from the movie, Chucky and Annabelle did very good, this also has a big part in marketing since they were selling the real life size doll that was similar to the one in the movies.