Horror as a genre is one of those things where there's a certain line you cross at you own risk,because there are certain things you can watch and be somewhat okay, and then there are things that you refuse to watch...like point blank period.
Side Note: Horror is filled with stereotypes that are extremely harmful to many groups of people or even animal, so please be mindful. Especially when many of those group of people are still marginalized to this day. So to say it's fiction, is more harmful than you think.
With that in mind let's talk about it in general and then deep dive into some tropes.
Horror is one of those genres that exploit primal fears. And that can be anything really. HP Lovecraft literally created an entire subgenre of horror due to his own fears of foreigners( or anyone not New England white) , barely basic understanding of math and science of the time, and the unknown.And how one presents horror to the audience have many methods. Surviving a religious cult, outrunning an oncoming plague, just living out in the middle of space and trying not to lose your mind. The possibility is endless.
Horror itself is a relatively new....ish genre. The first official one being Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, though it's technically sci-fi, minor details. And helping with that project was Brahm Stoker with Dracula, and just about everything Edgar Allen Poe wrote. From there we have works not necessarily horror but could be categorized as such.
Horror can be interpreted in multiple ways, but there is often a central villain, monster, or threat that is often a reflection of the fears being experienced by society at the time. So a horror film set in 1723 Hispanola will have a different theme than a video game set in 3022 on a space station orbiting New Halluah. A person or creature is called the "other," a term that refers to someone that is feared because they are different or misunderstood. This is also why the horror genre has changed so much over the years. As culture and fears change, so does horror.
Now there's many tropes and character archetypes that are horror essentials. The Final Girl, Cosmic Horror, Found Footage, there's a list of things. Horror is something shaped by society, and with how societal attitudes change, so does horror.
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Tropes and Cliches
RandomThere are a lot of tropes like the Token Gal and really hilarious cliches like Clumsy unless in Combat.And I want to discuss them here with you. Now there is nothing wrong with cliches and tropes, mostly because they're unavoidable. It's when you us...
