Horror Trailers Analysis...

After looking at some trailers which were aimed specifically at the horror genre, it gave me an insight into some of the common qualities of a horror trailer. Firstly, from all the the trailers and teaser trailers I saw for the horror genre, all could be grouped in to one of two categories. Some, like 'The Strangers' teaser trailer have little to no dialogue, leaving the storytelling part of the trailer to the music and the images shown. The other type of trailer, an example of which being 'Mirrors', depend more heavily on the use of dialogue, as the basic concept of the film is described in the teaser, with the images and sounds being less important to the story, and focus more on displaying to the audience that it is a scary film. In the trailer for 'Drage Me To Hell', the entire plot of the film, minus the may it ends, is given away in the trailer. This is something that horror trailer can afford to do more so than any other genre, as the makings of a good horror film dont depend to highly on a good story. The prospect of being scared is the main incentive for people to go and watch a film, so knowing the story before watching the film doesn't affect a films appeal very much. An aspect of horror trailers that is depicted in the trailers for 'Drag Me To Hell' and 'One Missed Call', is the focus on a single character. In both films, the entire trailer revolvesw around a single main character, and follows their story more so than anyone else, with other characters being almost completely shoved into the background. This is something that most horror films do, the only other alternative is for their to be a group of main characters. Films such as The Ring and Scream, have a single main character, and it is usually the case that that character is the only one to survive until the end. The difference between that and a horror film that has multiple main characters is that you can expect some of them to die in the film, as the foundation of a good horror film usually begins with a high death count. Even in films with numerous main characters, there is generally one who is focused on slightly more than the rest. such as Final Destination, where there is one character who is shown more than the rest, but there is a cast of main characters in the film.