Horror Film Trailer Repertoire

This is my basic list of the repertoire used for a stereotypical horror film and it's trailer. It was compiled by myself and a group of randomly selected media students to collect all of our ideas.

Iconography

• Blood
• Screaming
• Hooded figure 
• Vulnerable victim 
• Weapon (e.g, knife, gun)
• An attempt to get help
• Focus on one character
• Jump scares

Setting

• A setting that is believable to the audience
  (Somewhere considered either safe, like your home, or utterly vulnerable, such as an alley)
• At night
• A haunted house
• A dark forest
• An asylum
• A barn/cabin

Style

• Gothic tones (red,black,white,grey colour scheme)
• Pathetic fallacy (e.g, raining to represent a negative mood)

Narrative

• An everyday setting where your fears come true (home alone)
• Sometimes a twist in the plot or a cliffhanger
• Sometime a simple plot to focus on the scaring material
• Disrupting or breaking of the equilibrium
• Sometimes it ends with justice or where all hope is lost

Characters

• Relatable to the target audience of the film
• Victim is vulnerable, therefore usually a female or youthful (a child or teen)
• The villain is stereotypically a male
• The villain is usually either someone anonymous or someone the audience has been introduced to beforehand as a shock/twist
• Sometimes the use of children

Themes

• Growing up
• Relationships
• Good vs. evil