Aice Media Portfolio (The 2 genre choices)

 The horror begins!

Why'd I want to choose this?

So my group and I agreed we wanted to work on horror! (finally..) We chose this genre because it's genuinely one of the most entertaining to watch and take in. I like the idea of working with darker elements, seeing how the suspense can build up, and then releasing it in a single moment to horrify its viewers.

Characteristics of horror:

There's a wide variety of different characteristics of horror, like the natural setting choices, the well-written characters, supernatural elements, gore, and many more. The whole point of horror movies is to create a sense of terror, including that thrill that gets your heart pounding, and racing! Outside of Smile and Scream (two movies that I mentioned in the introduction), there are so many more movies that could help us identify the characteristics of horror. For example, Jeeper Creepers (2001) (genuinely one of my favorite horror movies, monster, and entire plot and concepts.) 

The movie follows many of the characteristics I mentioned. For example, the natural setting would be the specified county in the movie where all these missing cases appear. Another great example of the setting would be the Creeper's mysterious cave where he stashes his victims harvested corpses, in the House of Pain. The movie uses supernatural elements like the "Creeper" an immortal being that wakes up every 23 years, hunting for healthy organs to consume for 23 days upon its awakening, "every 23rd Spring, for 23 days, it gets to eat..." The movie includes characteristics of gore, showing decapitation, blood, corpses, etc... The movie really uses the idea of using emotional response to its advantage because the entire point of the way the Creeper picks out its victims is to use fear, "There's something in fear, something it can smell."

Psychological thriller.

Another possible genre choice my group would like to include is the subgenre Psychological thriller (yeah, yeah I know it aligns with horror, but it works as its own thing.) We chose psychological thrillers because (well I do) the idea of how it's supposed to mess with the characters, focusing on their minds and behaviors, making them feel different emotions, like anxiety, pressure, and overwhelming thoughts, leading them to near insanity. The build-up these emotional responses offer the overall suspense of the stories, make them so much more interesting to watch. 

Characteristics of Psychological Thriller:

With the use of emotional responses, many of these films tend to include complex characters, characters that always have some type of trauma, secrets, and troubled pasts. Flaws like insecurity, jealousy, or substance abuse disorders. A great recent example of this would be Skye Riley in Smile 2. She has suffered a traumatic car accident, where her now deceased boyfriend Paul Hudson has passed. This led to many blocks in her music/dancing career, leading up to substance use. Even for the rest of the movie, they show how she struggles in communication with her mother, causing family problems. In this genre of films, it's also very known to include plot twists, showing ideas of moral ambiguity, identity issues, and more. I think a movie that would work well would be the first Saw (2004) 

In the Saw franchise, people are put into deadly situations in which they must play games for the chance of survival, it basically follows the idea of using mind games as a way to manipulate the victims. In the first movie, the two characters Lawrence Gordan and Adam Faulkner are both chosen as the victims having to play this game. Following the characteristics throughout the film Lawrence is manipulated into thinking that the only way his family would be spared by the killer was to follow the instructions of the game and kill Adam. Nearing the very end of the film, although the family is already safe, with the emotional pressure that the Jigsaw games insinuate, Lawrence cuts his own leg off to escape the facility he's in. Even still after cutting his left, his moral ambiguity is destroyed, the belief he thought that they could both survive is gone. Lawrence leaves the room, crawling, leaving a deathly injured Adam on the floor after he shot him with a bullet and gun that were found in the room. This is a great example of how all this tension helps the suspense build-up to the final parts of the movie. I'm sorry to spoil but the grand twist at the end of the entire film is even after Lawrence is crawling away, out of the room and out of the screen, the main jigsaw killer, the supposed dead guy on the floor, gets up, leaving Adam in the darkness of the room, ending the movie.

I feel this is a great example of how the power the villain has over the victim's lives shows tensions In the story, by abusing this the characters are easily able to be manipulated into doing things they'd never imagined. These types of films even trick the viewers, adding insane fear in paranoia to the context of these events. 

Well, this is it for this portfolio, these are the genres me and my team are hopefully going to be able to pursue with this film opening.