key words

Horror – describes a film genre which aims to frighten the audience. This is linked to my study as the film I am using is from the horror genre; also I am investigating how Sweeney Todd has reinvented this genre and therefore need to research other horror films.

Genre – a category of media products classed as being similar in form and type. Genre plays a key role in my study as I am investigating how Sweeney Todd has reinvented the horror genre. I will need to research the key concepts of the horror genre and see how Sweeney Todd has changed these to make the film unique and different.

Director – the individual responsible for the overall creation of a film, including the mise en scéne and the structuring of individual shots, and with artistic control over the film’s final appearance, including the way in which it is edited and constructed. The director is also very important to my study as his previous films, including Sweeney Todd, have also changed the normal conventions of horror films, e.g. corpse bride where he has made a horror cartoon, making the film suitable for children whereas normal horror films would not be seen by children at all.

Celebrity – an individual who has become the focus of media attention and is therefore widely known and recognised by the public. Johnny Depp starts in Sweeney Todd. He is a well known actor and has starred in many films and in different types of films, e.g. children’s films, action films, horror films, etc. Sweeney Todd was disliked by quite a few people, however due to the fact that it was starring Johnny Depp it drew them in to watching it.

Audience – the groups or individuals targeted by producers as the intended consumers of media texts. Owing the wide availability of media texts, the actual viewers, readers or listeners may not be those originally targeted. Sweeney Todd has a wide audience profile. It is targeted at Johnny Depp fans, people who enjoy musicals, and people who enjoy horror or slasher films. There was quite a bit of discussion on this topic as the film’s rating varied for different countries and people who were not supposed to see the film had been to see it e.g. 14 year olds, also some people said the rating was not including the large number of Johnny Depp fans which are girls aged roughly 14-16. This would mean that a wide section of the audience has been eliminated.

Musical – a film genre that incorporates songs as part of the film’s narrative. Sweeney Todd is a horror musical; therefore I can research how musicals help tell the story.
Propp – a Russian formalist writer and folklorist who analysed the structure of folk stories in his work ‘The Morphology of the Folktale’ (1958).

Narrative Theory – a type of thinking that seeks to explain narrative structures and their relationship to wider cultural and genre-related factors.

Tim Burton (Director of Sweeney Todd) has made a quite a few other films where he has tried to re-create the genre by changing the films from their norms, such as; Corpse Bride (2005), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Mars Attack (1996), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Beetle Juice (1988), Frankenweenie (1984), Vincent (1982), The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), Luau (1982). All of these films were somehow changed by the imagination of Tim Burton, he has created these films by giving them different features from what people would expect them to have.

• Corpse Bride (2005) is a film where Tim Burton has created a children's horror film. The fact that it is an animation film doesn't make the film so scary enabling younger children to watch it.

• The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) is a change from other Christmas films. This film has a scary element to it (skeletons) which is unexpected, yet it turns out to be a great children's film which is shown by the use of animation.

• Frankenweenie (1984) is a film about a young boy Victor, who's pet dog Sparky (who stars in Victor's home-made monster movies) is hit by a car, Victor decides to bring him back to life the only way he knows how. But when the bolt-necked "monster" wreaks havoc and terror in the hearts of Victor's neighbours, he has to convince them (and his parents) that despite his appearance, Sparky's still the good loyal friend he's always been. Tim Burton is also re-creating this film. It will hopefully be released in 2009.

Tim Burton has created a lot of horror films but has also changed elements of them to make them watchable by children or has added a humorous side to it which kind of re-creates the horror genre itself as some of these films don't follow the normal conventions of horror.

During the 1990s, genre film production saw a multiplicity of remakes, sequels and adaptations. The Horror genre is no exception to the ‘rule of the remake and sequel’ during the 1990s and beyond. In his article ‘Same as It Ever Was: Innovation and Exhaustion in the Horror and Science-Fiction Films of the 1990s’, David Sanjek states that, although there seems to be an abundance of cinema screens, these offer nothing new or intellectually exciting or stimulating to the audiences.
Indeed, in the early 1990s the film industry seemed to return to classic novel adaptations and the Fantasy/Horror cycle of the 1930s, with films like Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh, 1994). By the mid-90s, we saw the release of Wes Craven’s Scream (1996), which revives the Teen Slasher Horror cycle of the 1970s and 1980s. This, at first, would seem to corroborate Sanjek’s assertion. However, the film actually refers directly, consciously and unashamedly to many classical Horror movies, such as Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) and Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978), and invites its fans to engage actively in deconstructing key generic conventions along with the characters, who are themselves Horror film buffs. Based on an analysis of visual and narrative elements in the Scream trilogy, this article will argue that, rather than ‘intellectual understimulation’ , practices of self-referentiality, pastiche and parody have contributed to a redefinition of the Horror genre by offering its audiences alternative forms and levels of engagement.