Common codes and conventions of a horror/ghost story?

**sandarab920** · 11-01-2010, 04:04 AM

What are the common codes and conventions for these genres? Please help.

11-01-2010, 11:35 AM

Think Scream covered most of them:

Scream

You may not survive the movie if you have sex.
You may not survive the movie if you drink or do drugs.
You may not survive the movie if you say "I'll be right back."
Additional rules (according to the killer):

You may not survive the movie if you ask "Who's there?"
You may not survive the movie if you go out to investigate a strange noise

Scream 2

The body count is always bigger.
The death scenes are always much more elaborate, with more blood and gore.

Scream 3

"You've got a killer who

**december.rain** · 11-02-2010, 09:09 PM

Never run out of the house.
Never call the police.
Never turn on a light.
Always walk backwarRAB when investigating weird noises.
If you're a woman, never run more than 10 feet without tripping over a tree root.
Never announce your impending retirement.
Never watch tv or movies so you don't know all this already.

**Jupiter Mission:** · 11-03-2010, 08:18 PM

Back in the old days the black guy never used to make it to the end of the movie. Dawn Of The Dead changed all that as far as I can see.

**Nami Cullen** · 11-04-2010, 08:18 AM

Yeah, in Night of the Living Dead [SPOILER]he nearly made it to the end! Oh, so close![/SPOILER]

(Spoilers in case there's one person out there who's never seen this classic!)

Actually, this film is a great for upturning normal conventions - family ties broken, parents killed by their children, sisters killed by their brothers, acts of heroism not being rewarded, houses not being places of refuge, strong rooms being death traps, surviving the threat only to die anyway - everything a normal society values is systematically destroyed throughout the film. Brilliant.

**Bertha** · 11-05-2010, 12:13 AM

When scared we tend to turn to three major authority figures:
(1) Parents, especially mother.
(2) The police.
(3) God.

In many horror films each of these shielRAB is presented and disposed of in turn, leaving the victim finally unprotected.

**cornnuts** · 11-05-2010, 02:25 PM

Nice! Why does no one ever seem to run out of the back door in a horror flick, only the front? If a killer comes in the front door, the suggestion is usually that this leaves the victim trapped in the house.