Choice of Trailer and Synopsis

We have decided to produce a highlights trailer as opposed to a scene trailer because for the horror genre, it excites the audience and creates more anticipation if you show them all the best bits of the film in the trailer. This effectively proves that it will be worth watching because the audience for this genre nowadays is much harder to scare and so horror films have to be worth watching. It also allows for us to explore the full narrative more and create a story and idea for an entire film rather than just one scene. Also, with highlights trailers it is much easier to create suspense and jump scares using collision cutting which would be harder to do in just one scene trailer. This is done well in the trailer for the horror film entitled 30 Days of Night (2007).

Our horror film will fit the three main sub-genres of horror (Psychological, Action and Gory) because the members in our group each prefer a different sub-genre. The foundation of the film will be based on the theme of paranormal, and so psychological will be the most noticeable sub-genre but there will be elements of action and body horror. This has been previously achieved with great success with the psychological/action/gory horror entitled The Thing (1981).

The idea for our film is based around our main protagonist ‘Leo’. He is an ex-policeman and has turned to drugs and alcohol for comfort. He is very unstable in the way he is choosing to live, and so when he begins to experience paranormal activity in his home. In watching the trailer you would initially think he was simply hallucinating due to his use of substances, but it is proven to be true when the spirit gets violent and starts attacking the protagonist Leo. 

Leo calls his best friend for help and they try to escape the evil spirit that haunts his house. It is then revealed that the reason Leo left the police (and turned to drugs and alcohol) was because he had to shoot an innocent child to save her from a painful and torturous experience. As the spirit's violence grows, Leo has to confront his personal issues because the spirit was created from the darkness inside Leo’s “broken mind.”