1. The ways in which small children and teenagers are viewed in horror films are quite particular. Small children are often seen as evil, with this cliche beginning in 'The Exorcist' and 'The Omen'. They can also be considered troubled or lonely who have evil invisible friends. You can usually hear the eerie humming of nursery rhymes and various other creepy soft music before someone gets killed. Teenagers, on the other hand, are seen as spoiled brats in most horror films. They are usually left home alone. They are usually the characters that people believe were meant to die and deserved the punishment they got.
2. Horror films are almost always set in a rural area (where no one is around to hear you scream) or in remote deserted motels. These settings are used to create a mysterious desolation around the character. They generally use houses with basements and small cupboards etc. in order to create a space for the murder of one of the beloved characters, most commonly the prettiest girl in the group.
3. The films also always contain a scene in which a woman washes her face and when she straightens up, sees a woman with half her face staring back at her in the mirror. When taking a bath, it will suddenly fill up with hair, blood or another cliche. Women are also always seen taking a shower in horror films. This bad idea stemmed from 'Psycho' and has been used constantly ever since.
4. Another cliche is when someone of the living undead or living dead passes a window or a door yet no one sees them. Te audience can see the danger yet the main characters are too busy to notice. This happens a lot, along with surprise appearances from a recently murdered femme fatale and the surprise of many people having to sacrifice various limbs and ligaments.
5. In horror films, the audience knows that sleeping, rides from strangers, personal ads, getting into lifts and any kind of computer is a bad idea in all senses. The emergence of the deadly in always apparent in these areas yet the characters seem to know nothing of it until something extremely bad happens.
6. Religion is contrasted in horror films. Religion is usually a comforting thing for many people but this totally changes in horror films. Priests are seen as well-meaning but highly incompetent, rabbis aren't featured much in horror films but nuns are to be avoided at all costs.
7. We see that homes and buildings are not as safe as we think. Buying a home is a bad idea as estate agents can never be trusted in horror films. Cheaper homes are usually the ones at which brutal murders have taken place. Looking at past or present security camera footage for any kind of supernatural being is not going to work as the dead don't show up on regular cameras.
8. Medical operations are always a bad idea. A transplant could result in the eyes of a witch, heart of a cannibal and the kidneys of a murderer.
9. Never go into a dark room alone. Along with lifts and computers, this is generally where someone comes to rip you apart or where the deadliest murder scenes are created.
10. Never answer the phone. It could result in something disastrous.
An example of a cliched horror movie is 'The Ring'. The trailer is below.
'Rachel Keller is a journalist investigating a videotape that may have killed four teenagers (including her niece). There is an urban legend about this tape: the viewer will die seven days after watching it. If the legend is correct, Rachel will have to run against time to save her son's and her own life.' (IMDb,Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
This film introduced Western culture to the horror film cliches so beloved today. It is based on a Japanese horror film from 1998, and remains the only American horror film that is scarier than the film its based on.
It stars an attractive heroine who discovers a series of baffling deaths. The police dismiss these deaths as coincidences. She starts to get strange phone calls from the dead and becomes involved with an unhinged little girl with a mane of matted black hair. Her skeptical boyfriend is killed. She goes to an asylum too speak to the unresponsive witness of the original murder.
Water begins seeping from the bathroom door; a girl is left to die by her friends and family (and comes back for revenge); choppy, time-lapse camera work enables the dead girl to cover crazy distances in short periods of time; and two surprise twists shock us at the end.
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