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Jade Johnson
Instructor: Malcolm Campbell
English 1101
September 9, 2014
Horror Movies: A Genre Analysis
One of the most interesting movie genres is horror movies. The idea of wanting to scare
an audience has been around since the very beginning of movies. Some of the very first horror
movies had the same conventions as scary movies today such as scary music, dark scenes,
vampires, ghosts, demons, monsters and so on. Theyve all shared the same conventions since
the beginning. Horror movies have evolved drastically since the early 1900s. At first, horror
movies werent very realistic, and had monsters that could never exist, with terrible acting. Now
horror movies are much more realistic and have plots that give the audience the idea and fear that
these things could really happen. When I see current horror
movies, I go home and am actually scared to walk down the
hallway at night alone or even take a shower because of
how real the movie seemed. Horror movies from half a
decade ago such as Tarantula and Godzilla would not have
frightened me because I know things like giant spiders and giant lizards are not real. Now horror
movies in this time have demons, exorcisms, haunted houses and evil spirits. They give us this
fear that these things could be real due to amazing computer graphics, and makeup.

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There are many sub-genres of horror as well, such as gore, zombies, sci-fi horror,
Halloween, vampires, cannibalism and so on. These sub-genres have their own conventions that
are different from each other but all still fit within the horror movie genre. They are different in
the way that, you will not see zombies in an alien movie, or vampires in a movie about
cannibalism. But all of these movies share the conventions to make them all horror movies, like
having dark scenes, scary music, blood, and suspense.
The movie Insidious fits within the sub-genre horror-possession, or horror-demonic
possession. Insidious is about a young boy and his father who can both travel to the spirit world.
The father travels to the spirit world to help his son and the fathers soul cannot get back and a
bad spirit possesses his body in the real world while his
soul is still in the spirit world. Throughout the movie, the
spirits are trying to take over the young boys body because
they crave to be alive. Those traits make it a horrorpossession sub-genre. You would not see these conventions
in the zombie-horror genre.
Another movie similar to the movie Insidious that has the same conventions for the
horror-possession genre would be Possession. This movie has a young girl who finds a box with
a demon inside of it. When she opens the box, the demon possesses her body. The demon
possessing the little girl makes this movie fit into the horror-possession genre, while still fitting
in the horror genre with the dark scenes, suspenseful music, ghost, and spirits and so on.
The conventions of this movie that make it a horror film are the darkness within the
movie scenes, the symbolism, spirits, suspenseful music, loud noises and screams to scare the

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audience and catch them off guard. Some other conventions are the young children that occur
throughout the movie that are bad spirits and majority of the movie is set at night. The
conventions of this movie that make it horror-possession would be that the father does get
possessed bad a spirit, and that multiple spirits are trying to make their way into the real world.
Some constraints of this movie would be that you wouldnt see any love scenes, or the spirits
singing and getting along with the humans. You also wouldnt see things like, zombies, or killer
aliens because those are conventions of different sub-genres of horror. They do not fit in with the
horror-possession genre.
The purpose of this genre/sub-genre is to scare people. The movie Insidious achieves this
by having spirits roaming the house and throwing items when its completely quiet to make you
jump out of your seat. During the movie, there were lots of spirits that looked really scary, and
they would be really close to the camera. Now that makeup artist are getting so talented at their
art is making these movies even worse because they look so realistic. The movie Insidious also
achieves its purpose by having scenes of spirits coming out of the young boys closet. Young
children are already afraid of their closets without the help of the movies because of the darkness
and not knowing what is in the closet while the door is closed. The audience of this movie would
not be young children. You could expect young adults to go see this movie in theatres or even to
go buy it.
Another genre that appeals to me would be video games. If I were able to change this
horror movie into another genre, I would make it a horror video game. Horror video games
usually hold the same conventions as horror movies. They have very dark levels, things that
jump out at you, and scary faces and spirits. I think the goal of this game would be to guide the
father through the spirit world to get him back to the real world to save his family from the spirit

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that has possessed his body. All of the scary video games that I have played before were
extremely difficult to finish because of me being so scared. Which is very similar to a scary
movie, there are plenty of times during a scary movie where I close my eyes and ears if I know
something scary is about to happen. But with a movie you cant get away from that scene like
you can pause a game and quit playing, unless youre in your home and can turn the movie off.
The horror movie genre and the horror video game genres goals are to scare the audience
yet keep them interested enough until the end. You are going to have a little bit of a different
audience for both genres. For the movie genre, youre going to have mostly young adults
watching the movie. With the game genre, you would have people who enjoy playing scary
games buy it, or even people who like to play games who liked the movie, most likely teens to
adults. I enjoyed the movie very much, so I would be someone who bought the game because I
liked the movie.

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Plot Summary: Insidious

The teacher Josh Lambert and his wife Renai move with their three children, the boys Dalton and
Foster and the baby Cali, to a big house. When Dalton is exploring the attic, he falls from the
ladder and hits the head on the floor. On the next morning, Dalton does not wake up and stays in
coma, but the doctors are not able to diagnose his problem. Three months later, weird things
happen in the house and Renai sees apparitions. She is sure that the house is haunted and
convinces Josh to move to another house. Sooner Renai sees ghosts in the new house and Josh
does not believe in his wife. But his mother Lorraine tells him that she had also had a vision of a
fiend in Dalton's room. They invite the medium and Lorraine's old friend Elise Rainier, who
brings her team of ghost hunters Specs and Tucker to investigate the supernatural phenomenon.
Elise explains that Dalton is a traveler with the ability of leaving his physical body and travel in
astral projection. Now his spiritual body is lost in a place called Further that is not for the living
and entities are gathered trying to get inside his empty physical body. Among these entities there
is a demon that needs Dalton's body to cause pain to the others. Further, Lorraine discloses that
Josh is also a gifted traveler and must seek out Dalton in Further and bring him back.

Plot Summary: Possession

The basketball coach Clyde and his wife Stephanie divorced a couple of months ago and their
teenage daughter Hannah and the girl Emily 'Em' live with their mother and spend the weekends
with their father. One day, Clyde stops his car in a yard sale and Em buys an antique carved box
and becomes obsessed with it. Em finds the hidden lock and releases an evil spirit that possesses
her. Soon Clyde discovers that Em has a problem, but his annoying ex-wife and her boyfriend
Brett do not pay attention to him and get a restraining order against Clyde. Clyde seeks out
Professor McMannis and when he sees the box, he explains that it is a Dibbuk Box, where a
fiend is trapped inside. He also explains that the box should not be open; otherwise the person
will be possessed by the spirit. Now Clyde travels to a Jewish community in New York and the
rabbi's son Tzadok returns with him expecting to exorcise Em to save the girl.