Horror and Supernatural Horror
What is Horror and Supernatural Horror?
The genre of Horror is made to provoke fear, suspense, and emotional discomfort (made to make you feel fearful). It often portrays themes like danger, the unknown, death, and terror. Horror can take many forms: slasher, psychological, creature-based, supernatural, and more. The sub-genre of Supernatural Horror is used to demonstrate horror while including characters, creatures, or elements from beyond the natural world.
What is the target audience?
Research shows that horror seems more intriguing to younger demographics, especially Gen Z, who studies have shown rank horror as one of their top preferred genres. A Deloitte study found that 28% of Gen Z list horror as one of their favorite genres. The primary target audience for horror is teenagers and adults, reflecting the genre’s themes, intensity, and rating restrictions.
Genre Conventions with Content:
Horror aims to evoke fear, suspense, and emotional discomfort. Its conventions often revolve around danger, vulnerability, and the unknown. Most common themes are: fear of death or the unknown, isolation or entrapment, loss of control, human evil or moral corruption, survival against an overwhelming threat. However, supernatural horror uses conventions previously listed but also includes elements that involve forces beyond the natural world. For example, their most common themes are: life after death, spiritual or religious fear, possession, curses, or hauntings, fate vs. free will, and the unseen or unknowable.
Genre Conventions with Techniques:
Handheld camera to create instability and realism, close-ups on terrified faces or disturbing details, slow zooms to build dread, point-of-view shots to align the audience with the victim or the monster, are all ways techniques are used to create that feeling of unease or suspense. Although supernatural horror is a form of horror and uses a lot of the same techniques, there are some techniques that are not used in horror to help to convey that supernatural presence. Such as, slow creeping camera movement to mimic a ghostly presence, floating or gliding shots to suggest supernatural point-of-view, sudden whip-pans to reveal apparitions, and distorted lenses to create an unnatural atmosphere.
Institutional Conventions of Horror and Supernatural Horror:
Many of these conventions that will be listed apply to the horror genre as a whole, regardless of subgenre. Dark or desaturated color palettes (black, red, grey), a central frightening figure (monster, masked killer, distorted face), isolated victims or silhouettes, sharp contrasts and shadows, typography with jagged, distressed, or blood-like fonts. Although many of the listed imagery are also used in Supernatural horror, the following listed imagery focuses on the unseen or otherworldly: ghostly figures, shadows, or silhouettes, possessed characters with unnatural eyes or expressions, haunted houses or cursed objects, mist, fog, or ethereal lighting, and blue and green color palettes to suggest coldness or death.
It (2017) is one of the most popular and highest-grossing horror movies of all time. It is a great movie that demonstrates all the techniques previously listed.
A Quiet Place (2018) is a amazing movie that demonstates supernatural horrors due to the paranormal deaf creatures that are invloved within the plot.
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