Horror Film Study, Task 2: Explain

The convention of the masked murderer used in horror films Halloween and Scream is an effective convention because it hides who the killer is that is slaughtering innocent lives, usually teenagers, even if you discover who they are at the beginning of the film (Halloween) it stilll made you question their motive and if they were killing because of the original 'rules' (you get killed if you: 1. have sex. 2. do drugs. 3. smoke/drink) or if they were just crazed psychopaths. By showing us who the masked murderer is at the beginning it tells us that the director wanted us to get more involved in the film and become a part of it rather than watching it but also trying to piece together the evidence and work out who the killer is. This makes the film scarier because you become a complete part of the film, like you were standing in the room rather than watching it on a screen. Also because there is a detective who has been researching and studying Micheal Myers for 30 or so years we expect that at the end of the film for Myers to die after being shot several times and then falling two stories and landing on his back, but when the detective goes back to check on Myers he is gone and the film ends with camera shots of different parts of the street accompanied by Myers heavy breathing, symbolising that Myers is everywhere and anywhere. No one is safe.

But when you do not know who the masked murderer is throughout the entire film it gets us involved in the film because if it was real life you wouldn't know who the killer was but it also makes you think about all the killings and evidence and if all the evidence points to one particular person or not. But in Scream's case, because there were two murderer's sharing the same identity it confused the viewer and made them think harder about who the killer could be. The masked used also created a scarier feel to it because it was just a standard halloween mask and anyone could buy them which it meant that everyone was a suspect.

The mask was also quite scary when the face appeared out of nowhere because it was white it stood out and gave the viewer a fright. In Scream the conventional use of two murderers as 'one person' was quite a new concept so this went against 'horror tradition'. Because I personally hadn't seen a horror film where there were two murderers I didn't expect it and this shocked me that two teenage guys that had seemed somewhat 'ordinary' would rape and kill friends and that they were also smart enough to cover their tracks by using a voice changer when talking on the phone and by having two people it meant that one could scare and then the other could comecomfort and vise versa so it confused the audience and the onscreen characters.