Research: Conventions found in horror films

In today's lesson, we looked at three different teenage horror film openings, Dead Mary, Dead Wood and Wrong Turn. We looked at all the typical conventions featured in horror films. Some of these included, secluded location, character investigates a strange noise or a character inexplicably falls over. 

Below, is the sheet we filled in whilst watching the openings of each film. 

We learnt from doing this that we should not use so many of these conventions within our openings. Between all three openings, they were all set in a secluded location and they all have fake scares within them. However, both Dead Wood and Wrong Turn, someone dies in the first 5 minutes. The film opening with the most conventions within it is the Wrong Turn. 

Another convention however that was not on the list was that, all three openings both had a male and female characters. There was no particular pattern to whether who died first, or who was the target.