Research into Horror Movies

Eleanore Ramsey

Key Components of a Horror Film

• Stock characters• Stock plots, situations, issues and themes• Stock locations and backdrops• Stock props

Stock Characters

Innocent child/victim, mysterious character, zombie, masked villain, priest, happy family, loving couples, male villain, ghosts/spirits, non-believer, carefree teens, hero, hysterical female, un-dead, mutated, monsters, last girl standing, cannibal, robots, aliens, weird doctor, dolls, possessed children, vampires, revenge character, old/young couple

Stock plots, issues, themes and situation

Evil creature kills many people, warnings ignored – unfortunate consequences, seeing things no one else can, serial killer stalks/slays victim, imaginary friend, death of innocent children, child abused, mentally insane, good vs. evil, revenge, religion, depression, science gone bad, lust, envy, suicide, zombie apocalypse, nightmares, supernatural, romances, person being hacked up, stalking women with cruel intentions

Stock locations and backdrops

Holiday homes in wilderness, diners, woods, top of a hill, isolated house, lake-camping, dark alleyways, homes of the characters, empty warehouses, foreign place to character, mental asylum, churches and graveyards, rural and out of town, hospitals, gas/petrol stations, cabins, farms, barns, highways, cornfield, abandoned houses, run down ghost towns, trains and tunnels, hotels and motels, London underground, basement and attics, mud, fog, storms, rain, night, moonlight, lightening, blood

Sci-fi horror: spaceships, space, planets

Stock props

Candles, voodoo dolls, skeletons, corpses, murder weapons: axe, pick, knife, body parts, spiders/cobwebs, Ouija board, radio (white noise), non-starting car, mirror reflection, medicine, electric chair, light switch, door handle, telephone, guillotine, woodchuck, foggy car windows, mask, gravestones, hatchets