What Are the Characteristics of Horror Films?

Try working with these 5 key elements.

• Characters. First off, you need to write characters worth caring about.
• Fear of the unknown. Fear of the unknown is a common psychological issue.
• Emotions. You can’t have a horror story without tapping into different emotions.
• Storyline.
• Killer ending.
• In summation.

What Do You Expect to See in a Horror Movie?

• The Dark. Expect to see some dark content in some dark settings.
• Scary Places. Photo by Andrea Boldizsar on Unsplash.
• Death. Everybody’s ultimate fear is the fear of death.
• Creepy Things.
• Disfigurements.
• Dismemberment.
• Suspense.
• Spooky Music and Cinematography.

• More action than dialogue: Show the audience, don’t tell them, what the characters are afraid of.
• Mounting suspense: Pacing the story and the action to take viewers by surprise.
• Jump scares: Sudden loud noises or unexpected images that make viewers jump.

The best horror movies create empathy with characters in relatable situations, even within a fantastical narrative. For example, fear of the dark is a common phobia, so many horror scenes are set in the night in the dark.

The Top Ten Things That Make Horror Movies Scary

• Fear of death. This is the ultimate fear, both existentially and psychologically.
• The dark.
• Creepy, crawly things.
• Scary places.
• Disfigurement.
• Dismemberment.
• Suspense (anticipation and expectations).
• Spooky music.

Horror movies contain psychological tricks that create illusions of suspense and danger through the manipulation of images, sound, and story. Horror films are designed to elicit certain emotions such as tension, fear, stress, and shock.

Through a method called Meta-Analysis — whereby they take the results of multiple scientific studies and use statistical analysis to combine them and reduce the error in an individual result, they found that its likely Psychopaths can feel fear. It’s their threat detection that’s impaired.

“And children exposed to scary movies, or who have real-life scary experiences, might become more sensitive or responsive, which might mean they don’t enjoy fear as adults.” It’s your brain making a decision and processing a threat.” This all triggers the fight-or-flight response to fear, which for me means flight.

Probably the most basic reason people like putting themselves through scary situations is that they like the feeling it gives them. “Our heart rates go up, our muscles get tense, our blood pressure goes up—and so, there’s a host of physiological reactions that happen when people see these kinds of movies,” said Sparks.