Evidence of Wider Reading

To look into the teen horror genre further, I will look at reviews for other films of this genre, and quote the similarities between these films.

The first film I looked at was 'Fear of the Dark', which has an overall rating of 5.4 on IMDB. This rating is similar to both 'Sorority Row' and 'Jennifer's Body', which got ratings of 5.1 and 5.3 respectively. The reviews of this film indicate that this film is made for an audience around the ages of 12-15, which is also backed up by it's rating of PG-13. A reviwer on IMDB wrote, ""Fear of the Dark" is directed for a younger audience that likes horror and that is obvious because there isn't a single gory moment in the movie but gore is replaced by some jump-out of your seat scenes." Despite not having any gore in the film, there are still creepy part of the film that keep it in the horror genre. This could be used in my film if I don't want to make the film too violent.

Another movie I looked at was 'Scream', which has a rating of 7.2. This rating is much higher than the ratings of other films I have looked at so far. The film is an 18, and the main characters are all teenagers, which shows that the target audience is older teenagers and young adults. A reviewer wrote, ""Scream" is the mother of all teen slasher films. From the opening sequence to the somewhat silly closing cliffhanger, it is one of the scariest productions of the past several years." If I were to make my film more gory, I should look at elements from more popular films such as 'Scream' and use them in my film to make it better.

The third film I looked at was 'Cry_Wolf', which recieved a rating of 5.8. As with 'Fear of the Dark', this film also has a low age rating, which is 12A. Despite being aimed at a younger audience, this film has a few unexpected twists, which as been mentioned by some reviewers. For example, this reviewer worte, "There was another small twist at the end that kind of caught me off guard. The movie is constructed slickly enough to convince you that you've got the mystery solved, but the twists are just subtle enough to throw you off the trail and reveal that you're not as smart as you think you are." Adding twists to a film makes it more entertaining, as the film will be less boring and predicable. I could try and include elements of this in my film to make it more interesting.

Overall, the teen horro genre has films with a lot of mixed reviews, although the majority of films seem to get mediocre reviews. Also, a lot of films for the older teens include a lot of swearing and gore, and films for a younger audience are focused on more creepy aspects which are still considered part of the horror genre. For my film, I could try to add a bit of both aspects to make my film less predictable, but also appeal to a teenage audience.