Horror According to DISTINCT

Don't
Ignore
Setting
Technical
Iconography
Narrative
Characters
Themes

Setting:

• Small communities.
• Isolated towns.
• Dark streets/allyways.
• Forests.
• Abandoned asylums/hospitals.
• Airfield Hanger.
• Warehouse.
• Normal everyday life.

Technical Code:

• Camerawork is expressive and non-natural.
• High and low camera angles can connote fear and nightmares.
• Dark light on the camera.
• Handheld shorts ( video camera ) makes the horror look innocent and normal.
• Disturbing sounds, ambient diegetic sounds like footsteps, or non-diegetic sounds like a heartbeat.
• Editing can create tension and suspense.
• Iconography:
• Dark colours like red and black ( blood, evil, danger, death, etc )
• Lighting is expressive and non-natural.
• Common objects: Weapons, masks, creepy locations, monsters.

Narrative Structure:

• There is always a hero, a man or a 'final girl'.
• The blonde girls are often killed first, and the brunette is the hero, or dies right at the end.
• Some narratives are very similar, for example slasher films. In almost in film, is a event that turns a
• person into a insane killer and returns to his hometown and them proceeds to pry on teenagers. These
• characters represent "immorality" and are usually dumb and therefore get killed early on, apart from
• one of two characters which live to the end or survive, most likely to be a female.

Character Types:

• Protagonist - victim/hero of the film.
• Villain - often a monster, serial killer or some sort of mutated freak.
• Immoral teenagers which always get killed.
• Creepy Children.
• Stalkers/Weirdos.
• Police officers - usually a mix of both good and bad.
• Many more....

Themes:

• Good vs Evil
• Childhood Issues
• Revenge
• Depression
• Madness
• Envy
• Suicide
• Zombies
• Insanity
• Lust
• Religion
• Supernatural
• Beyond Death