Conventions of Horror

VARIATIONS BETWEEN SUB-GENRES

Psychological Horror
Normally a femenine lead, often interlinked with detective crimes, and usually based on realistic events as opposed to fantasy-based frights. Fear and scares in psychological horrors are usually focused on tension rather than gore and graphic horror.
Some examples of psychological horrors would be Silence of the Lambs, it's sequals Hannibal and Red Dragon, and the Shining. In all of them the antagonist is an intriguing and intelligent, yet totally psychotic killer.

Fantasy Horror
Fantasy horror covers a broad spectrum, as the majority of horrors invoke some usage of the supernatural. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, demons and occultism are common themes, most commonly focused around some sort of haunting. Largely these films focus on families, and generally a family with some sort of peculiar history. More often than not, the family moves into a house with a suspicious past, such as being built upon a burial ground or the previous inhabitants being murdered.

Some examples of fantasy horror films are The Ring, The Grudge, and The Omen, in which thrills come from ancient monsters and curses. Again, female characters are either the protagonist or central to the events.

Slasher Horror
Dating back decades, the slasher horror has progressed with the times. Originally the sub-genre focused around a serial killer, combining elements of tension and out-and-out gore to create fairly basic storylines, mostly to do with a murder-spree. Now however, through video-games and perceptions of youth culture, the slasher horror has become far more brutal and visually opressive, using advanced CGI to recreate more grisly deaths and invent more harrowing torments for the characters to survive, or not, respectively.
Examples of the slasher horror include anything from Saw and it's endless sequals to the original Halloween. Previously, teenagers were the general victim or the genre, but that trend has faded somewhat recently.