characterisation, victim and hero

Victim

There are 3 types of victims

1)      Monster fodder – To show the power of the threat, we don’t know about the victim.

2)      Deserving – The victim deserves to die because they are generally stupid and underestimate the threat, or they are just a bad person.

3)      Stalked – The audience has built up a relationship with the victim and therefore feels sad when they are killed. 

Typical teen horror film victims: female, innocent, naive, stupid, drunk, arrogant because we want to see some people killed.

Example of a teen horror victim, from scream...

She is a good looking older teenage girl, who appears to be alone in a big house, showing she is vulnerable and open to attack. Not a great deal of her personality is revealed, I believe this is because she is “monster fodder,”  she is there to show the power of the villain therefore the audience do not need to build up an understanding of her character as she is there merely to be killed early on. All we lean about her is she’s a polite naive young women, because she comes across very friendly to the random stranger on the phone but after she hangs up and the man rings again, she leads him on, and in a sense you could argue she’s a bit flirtatious. Her innocence in a way leads to her death.

Typical teen horror hero’s: usually male, brave, natural leader, usually police officers or hold some sense of authority, and usually if the hero is a male he normally saves the damsel in distress and ends up with her.

 Hero

Typical teen horror hero’s: usually male, brave, natural leader, usually police officers or hold some sense of authority, and usually if the hero is a male he normally saves the damsel in distress and ends up with her.

An example of this is the police officer in the film scream 3, he saves the girl.

Sometimes the gender stereotype is subverted and the women saves or attempts to save the victims, this has became much more apparent in recent years, to avoid sexism and show that women are as independent and not inferior to men.

An example of this is in the film Jeepers Creepers when the girl attempts to save her brother.

The hero/heroine can also be referred to as the main character
In movies like Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street and similar fare, the main character (also referred to as the hero/heroine) spends much of the movie terrified and his/her companion are generally hacked, slashed, sliced, fried, crushed or dispatched in any number of other horrific manners, and in the end the hero (main character) is ultimately killed too.