Now this is essential. People watch horror movies for a few reasons but many watch for one very important thing...Boobs. Any guy that tells you he doesn't watch horror movies for boobs is mostly full of crap. Yeah the rest of the pieces of the puzzle are good but boobs are pretty much it for guys. Now as a counter point it's important to have at least one attractive male. I mean you need something for the ladies right? Like many things in film, balance is important if you want to reach out to an audience other than 16 year old boys. You pretty much need to make sure everyone is in their 20's. They need to drink and engage in coitus. These are their "sins" that makes it okay to kill them off. They will also make fun of the person mentioned in Step 7.
Fake blood, gore, etc. is also another staple in a good horror flick. That's kind of the point right. I mean without the blood and gore you're pretty much watching a dimly lit porn. That's for another post entirely. Now you don't need a lot of blood if you do other things correctly but if you're useless as a story teller just hack up a bunch of people and you're pretty much good here.
You have to have a villain, plain and simple. Someone has to kill, maim and psychologically haunt all these beautiful, attractive, 20-somethings running amok. Some villains are classic, others are most certainly not. There still needs to be an evil force making your date grip your hand for dear life and get a face full man boob out of sheer terror. Now if you're lucky, you'll come up with a good villain and the rest of your Genius horror flick will be a little more tolerable. If you don't have a good villain well add more B&B!
Step 4:I'll go check it out!
There is always, and I mean ALWAYS, some stupid ass that just has to go check out what that sound was. This dipshit is almost always confronted by one of two things: our villain or....wait for it......
....
MEOW! Ahhhh. I hate those stupid cats jumping out at me. Some animal will jump out from nowhere and hiss, bark or growl at the unsuspecting victim.
Step 5: Dun, dun, dun
You have to add a "jumpy part" here and there. If you can't build tension with the story just have something jump out at the audience and add loud, crashing music in the background. It's sure to get a scream every once in a while.
Step 6: You go check out the boathouse. We'll go this way.
There is always a group of people and they always split up. It's as much a fixture in horror films as much as B&B. The jock, most likely goes, with the girl he's trying to cheat with while his girlfriend goes off with the "hero". Classic, cliche horror filmmaking.
Many times there is a fat guy. He's rude. He burps and farts. He contributes nothing to the party. He'll probably offer someone a candy bar at some point then take it away, laughing maniacally. He's a typical American. The fat guy is usually the first one to die. Maybe the second behind a naked female.
Step 8: Nice guys finish...first??
The hero wins! Well...usually. Maybe not as much as it used to be in film but the "hero" or "heroine" in some cases, seems to defy natural selection and defeats our evil villain. Unless there's a sequel. In which case...
Step 9: How many shots was that?The villain ALWAYS makes one last attempt at his final victim. Just when Sir Slash-a-lot has taken 47 shots from a 12 gauge, 34 stabs to the chest with a chainsaw and a grenade lodged in his rectum, he will lay motionless, causing us to think he/she is dead. Then when we least (or most) expect it. BAM! He reaches out one last time.
So there you have it. Josh Genius's Horror Film Formula. Go out and grab a camera, make some blood and pay some innocent hooker to moan at the camera and flash her boobs and you have a classic piece of B-movie cinema!
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