Horror Tropes (Continued)

          Continuing on my last post, the second horror tropes I mentioned were the abandoned place and the final girl. If you have ever watched a horror film, and have thought "Don't go into that house!", it most likely was an abandoned place. These settings create a sense of mystery and because what is inside or who is inside is unknown to the viewers, the audience grows more and more anxious as the character enters the building. Not to mention, if you imagine the end to horror films such as "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974), there is always one person left who survives to tell the tale of what happened.

          Trying to find a horror scene that showed an abandoned building was surprisingly difficult, but any horror movie fan knows what I mean. When using an abandoned site as a setting, this creates a sense of isolation from the character and others in the real world. This causes audiences to assume that something is going to happen, since most abandoned buildings are far away from help services one might need if in danger. One setting that specifically scares me is when a movie is set in an abandoned hospital. I think the reason this location works so well for horror films is because hospitals are already scary when they're operating!

          The final girl in horror films is exactly what it sounds like. You may have noticed that in most horror films, there is always one girl who outlives the rest of her friends who were violently murdered. In the photo above, final girl Sally from "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974), has barely escaped her killer after watching her friends die one by one. This technique causes the audience to root for that last character to survive, and this also allows one person to recount for what happened at the beginning or end of the film depending on the movie's narrative.

Sources:
Balcazar, Dahlia, et al. “Digging into Horror's ‘Final Girl’ Trope.” Bitch Media, www.bitchmedia.org/post/digging-into-horrors-final-girl-trope-feminism-hemlock-grove.