Jack Fisher
Conventions of the Teen Slasher genre
For my Film Studies creative project I have chosen to film to create a film of the horror genre. I will be filming a sequence from My imagined film ‘Murder Creek’, which will contain the conventions of a ‘teen-slasher’, which is a sub-genre of horror.
The teen slasher film usually contains a psychopathic killer, who stalks and preys on his victims, killing them one by one, usually in a violent and graphic manner. The killer is usually stalking one person in particular, but in the process of getting to his chosen victim, has to murder people associated with the victim, usually using a cutting instrument, such as a chainsaw or axe, to murder his victims. This is demonstrated in Scream (Wes Craven, 1996, USA) in Which the psychopathic murderer dresses in the famous Scream mask, graphically murdering one student after another with a knife, in order to get to the character who he is intending to kill, Sidney Prescott.
In teen slasher movies the psychopathic murder usually has a connection with the victim who they intend to murder, as seen in the film Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1980, U.S.A), in which the victims are attacked from beyond the grave by a former child murderer who was brutally burnt to death by the parents of the victims, giving the killer a vengeful motive for the murders.
Recent Slasher have tended to conform to following a particular formula , which starts with a past event (such as the accidental running over of a man in I Know What You Did Last Summer, or Freddy Kruger’s loss of life in Nightmare on Elm Street) ), which is followed by the present tense, usually at a time which is relevant to the past even, again as in I Know What You Did Last Summer, where the main character receives a letter saying I know what you did last summer, exactly a year after the accidental killing of a man. This event is followed by the killer bringing about what he or she believes to be retribution, as in Nightmare On Elm Street , with Freddy Kruger murdering the children of the people who had brought him to justice.
The killer in the slasher genre is usually a male, who’s identity isn’t known to the victims and is disguised using clever lighting and cinematography.
The victim’s in the slasher genre are typically young and attractive high school or college students, who are often found drinking and having sex at parties while the killer is at large, leaving themselves vulnerable to attack, as in Scream, where a character goes to the garage to fetch more alcohol and is trapped under the garage’s automatic door. The sole survivor of the killer’s brutal reign is usually a female friend of the victims, who is wary of their rebellious actions, choosing not to partake in acts such as underage drinking and pre marital sex, however this doesn’t apply to all teen slasher, as sometimes there is a single male character left after the killing spree.
Teen Slasher films tend to be high concept in that they focus more on gratuitous levels of violence, leaving an actual plot and dialogue to a minimal.
The opening sequence of a teen slasher often consists of the past event for which the killer is taking his vengeance on the teenagers, this establishes who the main group of characters will be in the narrative and the reasons for which they will be murdered. This sequence is usually followed by a scene containing the first murders of the killer, this is the type of sequence I have opted to do for my creative project.
The above are the conventions of the ‘Teen-slasher’ genre, which I have chosen for my creative project, these are the conventions I will be aiming to use for when filming my imagined film ‘Murder Creek’.
No comments:
Post a Comment