The King's Corpse

Horror

 

My short film is made up of two principle sub genres of horror, found footage and slasher. I have met the narrative conventions of the slasher sub genre with the use of a principle antagonist killing each of the protagonists. I also used the main theme of found footage films, being an event that occurs to the cast that they are filming, with a supposed paranormal aspect. I also feel that the comedic aspects in the opening minutes are a convention of found footage, as these are people getting along naturally and would try to make friends and get their personalities across. The corrupt footage aspect is used a lot as well, just to get the narrative moving as they are supposedly filming their entire journey and the corruption of the footage allows time to pass. As my film was limited to a certain time (around 5 minutes), this was an element I had to abuse a fair amount to keep the narrative flowing, especially as hours pass before they reach the wood and before trevor dies. 

​

I have conformed to many of the technical conventions of found footage films, with the use of all diegetic sound, handheld camera shots supposedly held by the cast and simple editing techniques. This challenges some key conventions of slasher films such as the focus on gore, as the characters would not focus on their injuries and would be more concerned in escaping and those being injured would not be able to film their own pain. This means that the horror comes largely from the suspense built up. The exception to this is Ali's death, in which the killer rests the cameraphone down to film his death, which is quite a gory scene. In slasher films, All deaths are focused on at some point, whether it's at the time of death or when someone discovers the body. In my film, deaths are witnessed, but are either obscured by the headlamps, or only seen briefly. In found footage films, the deaths are generally implied or not focused on, a key example is the Blair Witch Project, in which a character disappears and at the end, we see the protagonists in a position similar to one described earlier in the film in which the blair witch supposedly killed her victims, hence implying their death. 

 

The wood known as "the King's Copse" is a very typical horror film location, as shown from films such as the Blair Witch Project and House of 1000 Corpses. This is because horror can be built from isolated locations, meaning that nobody will be able to intervene with the events taking place to save the characters and it's difficult to escape. Woodlands mean a lot of dark, seemingly endless space that allow the antagonists to always seem close to the characters and leads to a lot of interesting and well timed deaths that would be unconvincing in well lit space.