A genre I find particularly interesting despite my actual disliking of watching most films of particular genre is: horror. The horror genre can be broken down into several sub-genres such as comedy horror, slasher film, psychological horror, gore, sci-fi horror, crime horror and many more. Horror is an interesting genre due to its diverse representations of presenting the horror element within the film despite its often simple narrative.
In most horror films there is usually a way for one person to ‘survive’ against the evil and audiences are often presented with the idea of the ‘final girl’. The ‘final girl’ can be seen portrayed by her ‘masculine interests, inevitable sexual reluctance.. and sometimes her name’ (Clover, 1987) who is often the last person to face the killer, seen is Alien (1979), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Halloween (1978). The idea of the ‘final girl’ is toyed with in television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) which presents a blonde attractive girl who ‘gets the boys and fights the monsters’, as well as in recent television series Scream Queens (2015). A film that likes to actively acknowledges the horror conventions within its film and toys with that idea is the 1996 comedy horror Scream, which presents within the film the a ‘set of rules’ within horror movies in order to survive; don’t drink, don’t do drugs, don’t have sex and don’t say ‘I’ll be right back’.
Although most horror genres present a physical evil within their film whether it be a person, animal, monster, zombie, doll, child, in the film franchise Final Destination (2000), the film’s villain is presented as death itself. In Final Destination it also seen that despite characters trying to figure out ways to survive and stop death from killing them, in all the films there are no survivors, as death eventually gets them all.
The typical horror genre conventions have been challenged throughout the years and due to the nature and creativity of the horror genre, films are able to explore and challenge these conventions.
References:
Clover, C, 1987, Her body, himself: Gender in the Slasher Film, No. 20 Special Issue: Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy, University of California Press.