horror genre conventions

realised this has never been posted i think.
Films in the horror genre are designed to elicit the emotions fear, disgust and horror from the audience. Horror films usually feature jump scenes which are purposely designed to make the audience jump and startled through the use of macabre and supernatural features. Macabre is used to emphasize the details and symbols of death. this causes frequent overlapping with the fantasy and sci-fi genres. The horror genre also frequently overlap with the thriller genre.

The horror genre deals with the viewers nightmares, their hidden worst fears, any revulsions and the terror of the unknown. But a sizable chunk of the horror genre focuses on the supernatural. Most films which contain a plot about serial killers, disease or virus breakout are usually defined to be in the horror genre. Its plots often involve the intrusion of an evil force, event, or personage, mainly of supernatural origin, into the everyday world.
Some of the most common elements of horror films are; ghosts, torture, gore, werewolves, ancient curses, demons, vicious animals, vampires, haunted houses and zombies. When horror films use these elements they seem to have the best ability at scaring the viewer. Some elements scare other people more than others do because these elements have become convention most people tend to be scared of them.
What is defined as a horror film varies from decade to decade this is because people are harder to scare because a lot of the older horror films compared to some more modern horror films don’t seem to have as much gore in them. As time progresses horror films have to display more explicit gore, jump scenes/scares, and supernatural content. Horror films such as Psycho are now seen as thrillers instead of being a horror film like they were when they were originally released.
Horror films tend to be based on literature of the gothic/horror genre. The conventions of the horror genre are blood, death, killing, haunted houses and isolated settings, monsters, evil, weapons, darkness, storms, chase sequences, gore, violence, screams and ghosts. These create fear because they are not new ideas they are taken from peoples deepest fears, literature, and built up from some of the earliest horror films.