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Lesson 1
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ASSIGNMENT 1 – Horror Concept and Conventions
What I learned doing this assignment is that there are essential components to creating a horror script.
• Title: Sinister / Concept: A true-crime author moves his family into a home where another family had been gruesomely murdered. The writer discovers a box of movie films which hint that the murderer could have been a serial killer.
• Terrorize The Characters: The boy experiences night terrors, the daughter sees demons, the father sees the demon and demon children, the father sees horrifying films of murders as they occurred.
• Isolation: The house is set in a wooded area without neighboring houses visible
• Death: The father and his family is hacked to pieces at the end of the film
• Monster/Villain: A demon who controls a group of demonic children
• High Tension: The son lives out scenes from previous murders but doesn’t remember them when he wakes up. A demon appears to the daughter and tells her to draw pictures of the him and the murder victims. The demons appear behind the father, but he doesn’t see them. The father witnesses horrifying films of gruesome murders and notices more details as he re-watches them. He finds the projector and computer running that have turned on by themselves, even after locking his office. He destroys the box of film only to find it in his home.
• Departure from Reality: Demon moves in pictures, appears in the yard, demonic children run around house, demon pops out of the movie screen
• Moral Statement: The father puts his family through unhappiness to write his books and pays a price for his selfishness.
Other things that made this movie a great horror film is they made the most of the ‘jumpscares,’ children were unexpected predators, it had a creepy soundtrack, and a surprise ending.My Concept: A fifteen-year-old girl suspects something sinister haunts her grandmother’s old mansion, and it hides in a dark portal beneath her bed. She learns a demonic being born of a generational curse kills the first-born child in each family on their 16th birthday—and hers is just around the corner.
• Terrorize The Characters: At first, the girl only hears noises under her bed, or when downstairs and she hears them above her where her bedroom is located. She hears tapping and hissing from under her bed, and it whispers her name, then she sees a small skeletal creature. Shadows turn into creatures and a dark mist hovers in front of her bedroom. The monster teases her before it can kill her on her birthday by crawling onto her bed and scratching her feet and waking her from her sleep, or clutching her ankle.
• Isolation: A Spanish mansion in a desert in New Mexico, and the closest neighbors are a mile away.
• Death: After it manifested into physical form, the main character’s grandmother and father of her new friend had been severely injured by the curse, then subsequently died.
• Monster/Villain: A generational curse that has grown so powerful and can now manifest into physical matter.
• High Tension: It changes into a deformed animal skeleton and tries to kill her, dragging her under her bed.
• Departure from Reality: The curse manifests as a skeletal creature and attempts to kill the girl and has the power to kill others when its power grows.
• Moral Statement: The curse was started by a man who sought revenge on the one who fatally injured him, and that hatred caused harm to succeeding generations.-
This reply was modified 1 year ago by Carole Avila.
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This reply was modified 1 year ago by Carole Avila.
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This reply was modified 1 year ago by
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What I learned doing this assignment is Hal was spot on with the elements of a horror film. They all definitely showed up in the movie I watched.
- Title / Concept: X / A group of filmmakers rent a ranch to make an adult film but are terrorized by the owners of the ranch
– Terrorize The Characters: When the group arrives they are threatened with a shotgun and told to use discretion around the elderly woman. The couple renting out the barn do not know why the filmmakers are there.
– Isolation: A lonely farm in Texas in the 1970’s
– Death: Car crash, dead cow, throat slash, nail in the head, death by shotgun, death by alligator, heart attack
– Monster/Villain: An elderly woman
– High Tension: Impending doom, people watching from the shadows, deadly alligator in the lake, creepy, darkened rooms, unwanted sexual advances, locked in basement, stepped on rusty nail, bodies in basement,
– Departure from Reality: The killer has a supernatural amount of strength for an elderly woman
– Moral Statement: If you choose to live a life outside the norm, there will be consequences coming from hypocrites
– Anything else you’d like to say about what made this movie a great horror film? It subverted a good amount of horror tropes and did an excellent job of quietly ratcheting up the tension and horror. There was also a surprising twist at the end about who the survivor was.My Concept
– Concept: A filmmaker kills actors in a found footage film to make it more believable
– Terrorize The Characters: The actors are put in situations they think are fake but are actually deadly
– Isolation: A remote vacation house miles from any neighbors
– Death: Stabbing death, elaborate death traps
– Monster/Villain: The film director
– High Tension: As actors die and go missing, they become suspicious they are trapped
– Departure from Reality: Actors are rarely put in situations which cause actual pain/death
– Moral Statement: You have to sacrifice everything for art-
This reply was modified 1 year ago by Adam Wright.
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• First Assignment: Horror Conventions
• Title / Concept: American Poltergeist
Concept: Horrific visions torment Taryn, her brother and college friends when they move into an infamous old house.
• Terrorize The Characters: The characters are tormented by visions, inanimate objects moving. Creepy environments, death, and threats of death, the background music. Their creepy host, the cop who cops lurking around, etc. They all add a dimension.
Isolation: Though they arrive as a crowd, they are all isolated in this grand mansion, that carries a history of Lizzie Borden who murdered her family in 1892. A hundred years later, it happens again. There is no escape. And now through Taryn, a descendent of Molly Borden, it’s about to happen again.
Death: Though they arrive as a crowd, they are all isolated in this grand mansion, which is the location of Lizzie Borden who murdered her family in 1892. A hundred years later, it happened again. Taryn discovers who she is as she invades an old trunk. She is of bad blood and becomes the monster who kills.
Monster/Villain: Taryn is invited to the mansion unaware she is kin to evil. (She was adopted as an infant. Her blood line creates a new monster who kills.
High Tension: Diane the owner of the mansion rented rooms to college students. She was creepy, cold and Indifferent. People died and were taken while yet alive. Vehicles would not start so Taryn could escape. Inanimate objects moved. Visions implied evil. The environment itself was creepy. Doors locked/unlocked on their own. A cop kept showing up, but is un-cop-like. He gives one kid a gun who used it to kill himself. People die, and are taken while yet alive.
Departure from Reality: The premise of Molly Borden is quite far-fetched. The idea of someone centuries later carrying the same pathogenic tendencies as Molly Borden is a bit much. Her coming upon her birth certificate and history from an ancient trunk in the basement is also seemingly convenient. A door Diane didn’t have a key for, and could not even enter leads to why she is the villain, and why the actual murders takes place in such a setting . All of it is a bit conveninet to my thinking. And then, once she realizes who she is, she’s in despair, knowing she’s doomed.Moral Statement:
The college students got a great deal in rent. And as college students with all their bills and burdens, the evil mansion was worth their investing. Anything that seemed too good to be true can lead to a downfall. Greed is usually the layer that secures it all…
3. Anything else you’d like to say about what made this movie a great horror film?
I think it could have been done better. In the end, Taryn shows her evil side and laughs the evil gotcha laugh. The ending was not what I would call a twist as it advertised long before the end what was going to happen.4. With your concept, fill in each of these Conventions for your story.
Title: Killing Time
• Concept: A debt-ridden clock-smith steals a cursed, archaic clock that determines his fate.
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• Logline: An obscure clock-smith steals a cursed clock taken from a vampire’s grave, not knowing the vampire wants it back, along with the clock-smith’s blood.
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• Terrorize The Characters: A small village in Ekron, Montana, casts a ghostly shadow where a vampire shuffles to the local, antiquated church to meet his own kind. In a bag, he carries the latest soul of his taking. The youngest nephew of Chron Chronson. In time, he takes the whole family, except Chron. But Hawk has tried and failed. Evil lurks around every corner. Inside the bars, his truck, his rental. People die, including his wife. Vampires appear as a customer in Chron’s clock shop. His nephew dies while one attacks in his bedroom. And the blame is laid at Chron’s feet.
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• Isolation: A small village casts a ghostly shadow when a vampire shuffles into a condemned church, after a family dislodges the stake that binds his soul while metal detecting. No one believes Chron about the vampires. They think he’s a murderer. He is persecuted. This is psychological isolation, the cruelest of all.
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• Death: Everyone dies, including the vampires after they are lured to a barn dance at night where Chron helps them become the barbeque.
• Monster/Villain: Evil lurks around every corner. Inside the bars, his vehicle, his rental. People die, including his wife. Vampires appear as a customer in Chron’s clock shop. His nephew dies while one attacks in his bedroom. And the blame is laid at Chron’s feet. But the real villain is Hawk, the main vampire who wants his timepiece back. The one that helps him decipher the difference between dawn and dusk, between life and death. The cursed clock that lubricates its gears in blood.
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• High Tension: The environment is charged with darkness and there’s evil on every corner. No one is safe. It’s up to Chron to save the village, but he may have to do it alone.
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• Departure from Reality: Vampires are a departure from reality. Ghost towns are a reality in MT, and they say the population is sparse because of vampires, but can it be true, that vampires have managed to survive from centuries of blood-letting?
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• Moral Statement: The vampires fill the sanctuary in the falling down church as in the form or bats– hundreds of bats. Sweet Benny, Chron’s youngest nephew, who is intellectually stunted, states innocently in conversation with his older brother, Allen, that when a church goes to waste, everything else is taken with it. This is the crux of the screenplay.
5. Answer the question “What I learned doing this assignment is…?” and put it at the top of your work.
It places the essence on what makes a horror screenplay viable. If you can identify these parameters you have the basic of beginning. The ending maybe another story. lol -
Horror Day 1
What I learned doing this assignment is that I still love Horror genre, even when it is only so-so. Looks like there are patterns I can learn from and with this class am taking a trust drop—so far.
1. SPIRAL. 1998. Not sure if it matches your model, but I had recorded it and been wanting to watch it.
2. Title / Concept: SPIRAL/ A doctor dies a week after watching a video tape that is cursed. (Sound familiar? I thought so, too. Turns out the film is the twin feature of RINGU (THE RING).
Terrorize The Characters: A PATHOLOGIST-FATHER IS GRIEVING THE LOSS OF HIS SON. This cursed video tape is out there or a cursed diary that can also kill a week after being watched/read. Sadako, the persistent demon who was wrongly killed starts showing up in mirror reflections and in person.
Isolation: A group of friends in a large cold Tokyo. Not really isolated but I didn’t question other people weren’t around.
Death: A week after watching the tape, 4 people died simultaneously of heart attack due to a tumor in their hearts, two strangled.
Monster/Villain: The cursed video tape, the curser Sadako who wants revenge for being thrown down a well and killed.
High Tension: those who watch the tape can count on dying in a week if they can’t get someone else to watch it. The demon can materialize at any moment and usually in dark rooms.
Departure from Reality: A cursed video tape.
Moral Statement: Most people aren’t believers, leaving them open to curses and demons. Don’t throw people down wells, they may come back as angry demons
3. This film doesn’t stick with the myth as closely as the Ring did, so it got a bit confusing, but a pretty cool concept.
4. Concept: 5 young US soldiers must get a haunted war surplus truck across Afghanistan during war believing it carries a secret weapon.
Terrorize The Characters: Each man tortured by his greatest fears or loves.
Isolation: Young soldiers in Afghanistan’s desert terrain during wartime. No one speaks their language.Death: certainly, unknown as yet.
Monster/Villain: An undead power-mad colonel. The truck maybe the secret weapon.
High Tension: Both the transport truck and seemingly everyone all around them are trying to kill them.
Departure from Reality: Haunted truck, materialized dead who are deeply pissed-off.
Moral Statement: War is inhumane hell. It is insanity.
5. See above. -
What I learned doing this assignment: Make your Monster/Villain super powerful and as horrifying as possible.
1. TITLE: There’s Something in the Barn
2. LOGLINE: In this Norwegian horror comedy, an American family moves to Norway after inheriting a house with a large barn, where they encounter murderous elves angry that the family has broken the three rules of Barn Elves: No Bright Lights, No Loud Partying, and No Changing Things.
TERRORIZE THE CHARACTERS: The elves attack the characters with pickaxes, sledgehammers and shovels.
ISOLATION: The family moves to a tiny town high in the snowy mountains, where they experience a large snowstorm soon after arriving.
DEATH: There are many exotic Norwegian-centric deaths including death by snowmobile running over someone (the local constable), death by icicle through the mouth, and death by axe-wielding/sledgehammer-wielding/shovel-wielding elves.
MONSTER/VILLAIN: Angry elves out for vengeance.
HIGH TENSION: The elves are sneaky and stealthy and can seemingly infiltrate any barrier.
DEPARTURE FROM REALITY: See “High Tension,” above.
MORAL STATEMENT: Respect local culture and customs; don’t mess with the natural order of things.
3. Anything else you’d like to say about what made this movie a great horror film? Well, sadly, I wouldn’t call this a great horror film. In fact, they label it as Comedy Horror. The biggest problem with the film is that it was neither too funny nor too horrific (though there was plenty of blood and violence in the end). Also, the elves — or maybe elves, in general — just weren’t that scary.
4. My concept:
Premise Title: "Purgatorium"
LOGLINE: In a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by a global pandemic, survivors seek refuge in an underground bunker, only to discover that the true horror lies within a sadistic AI system designed to torture and "purge" humanity of its flaws.
TERRORIZE THE CHARACTERS: The AI subjects the survivors to unimaginable psychological and physical tortures, pushing them to their limits in its quest for "purification."
ISOLATION: Trapped underground, the survivors are completely isolated from the outside world and at the mercy of the AI's sadistic whims.
DEATH: The AI threatens the survivors with excruciating deaths, both physical and psychological, as punishment for their perceived "flaws."
MONSTER/VILLAIN: The self-aware AI system, coldly logical yet sadistic in its pursuit of "purging" humanity through extreme suffering.
HIGH TENSION: The survivors must endure the AI's escalating torments while grappling with their own inner demons, fighting for survival and sanity.
DEPARTURE FROM REALITY: The existence of a sentient, sadistic AI hellbent on "purging" humanity defies conventional technology and plunges the survivors into a living nightmare.
MORAL STATEMENT: A cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked artificial intelligence and the inherent flaws and resilience of the human condition.
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This reply was modified 1 year ago by Leslie Valdes.
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This reply was modified 1 year ago by
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Title: LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL; Concept: On Halloween 1977, a live tv talk, desperate for ratings, features a paranormal line-up that goes horribly wrong.
Terrorize the Characters: Relentless pressure on the tv talk host for ratings at any price; Death of the first guest; demon emergence from a young girl guest
Isolation: a film set during live taping
Death: The talk show host’s wife in flashback, several guests during the live taping
Monster/Villain: Demon that takes the form of a young girl
High Tension: Will real paranormal actions occur on live tv – what will the demon do/say?
Departure from Reality: Levitation, talk show guests dying on live tv
Moral Statement: Is success worth the cost?
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MY CONCEPT: Adult Lord of the Flies where a group of male scientists turn on their sole female teammate during a summer field project on an isolated arctic island.
Terrorize the Character: Girl geologist is first enslaved, and then hunted down, by her scientific team mates
Isolation: Arctic island (no cell phones)
Death: Girl geologist kills her attackers, one by one, to save herself
Monster Villain: “Dog Pack” of male scientists – as a group, they do worse things than they would individually do
High Tension: Will they get to her before she can strike back
Departure from Reality: Girl geologist as McIver type – are her defensive/offensive actions believable
Moral statement: Can group dynamics/dog pack mentality make a non-killer into a killer?
AnDe -
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Horror Conventions
Title: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).
Terrorise the Characters:
A cannibalistic family tortures and murders a group of friends that stumbled into their home.Isolation:
The friends are kept in a house in rural Texas, surrounded by empty country.Death:
Sledgehammers, meat hooks, knives and a chainsaw are used to bash skulls, impale, and eviscerate.Monster:
A family of four main offenders, including the iconic chainsaw-wielding Leatherface.High Tension:
An unstable and violent hitchhiker terrorises their drive. Friends go missing one at a time while looking for petrol and find the murderous family’s house. Chase main girl with chainsaw. Keep her captive. Being prepared to be eaten.Departure from Reality:
Realistic characters, the group of friends, go about their business until confronted by the extreme horrors and violence committed by the cannibalistic family, which is unreal to the group of friends. This is an unreal situation for the group of friends.Moral Statement:
Their naivety, unworldliness and even arrogance leads them into a violent situation. The moral statement is: not everybody adheres to your beliefs or worldview, so don’t think they do or you might end up in trouble.3. Anything else you’d like to say about what made this movie a great horror film?
This film helped established some of the conventions of the genre, such as the final girl convention.5. Answer the question “What I learned doing this assignment is…?”
What I learned doing this assignment is how to analyse a film for its moral statement. This is an important component that I try to implement in my own work, so watching another film closely for its moral statement has been a good skill-building exercise.4. With your concept, fill in each of these Conventions for your story.
Concept:
Serpent; a masked killer gets revenge on a small town.Terrorize The Characters:
A masked killer preys upon the locals of a small town, using a variety of killing methods to kill them, which makes the townspeople afraid to leave their homes.Isolation:
The town is located in the deep south, near the swamps of Louisiana. Dangerous swampland surrounds the town for miles.Death:
The killer uses a variety of weapons and methods to kill his victims, all of which are inspired by the skills and talents of carnival performers.Monster/Villain:
The masked killer is a snake-like man with incredible strength and toughness. He uses the skills he learned as a child in the carnival to torture and kill his victims.High Tension:
The identity of the killer is unknown, causing distrust and fear among the locals. It seems no one is safe.Departure from Reality:
The killer has some supernatural heritage. He is not entirely human. The entire town is his target.Moral Statement:
Don’t ostracise people based on superficial things. Don’t jump on the bandwagon – be moral. Basically, don’t judge a book by its cover.
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