Horror Films and the 3 Act Structure.

I’m putting forward the idea that (most) Horror films have their own variation of the 3 Act Structure. As I have discussed in previous entries on the 3 Act Structure most movies work on the premise that a protaganist is confronted with a problem that they have to solve and by doing so learn the courage to over come their fears. They learn something about themselves, are better people for their experience and the world returns back to normal. Horror films skew this ideal. I’m not saying that there aren’t points where the characters in horror films confront the problem I’m just saying there are a reasonable amount of horror movies where this makes little difference. Think about the end of Dawn of the Dead (the remake, as the group escape from the mall everything goes wrong. One woman is sawn in half, a escape vehicle goes over killing most inside, some of the heroic leads sacrifice themselves to allow the rest to get away and finally it is revealed that the Island they thought would be free of zombies turns out to be not so.