Uses and Gratifications in Accordance to our Film

Our genre of film fits into a few of the Uses and Gratifications categories, those being; 'simple entertainment' and 'escape from daily life'. A horror movie is not completely intellectually challenging, hence why it falls under 'simple entertainment' and most movies fitting into the genre contain things that do not exist in real life (like monsters or ghosts) so the genre can fall under the 'escape from daily life' category. Films that cater to this use and gratification are things like Paranormal Activity and A Nightmare On Elm Street. The events that take place inside our movie will be mostly unrealistic as an extremely minute percentage of people will ever have been faced by a murderer out to kill them. This means that through interaction people will be able to immerse themselves in something they never will have experienced.

I think that uses and gratification theory does not provide enough information to be able to produce a detailed analysis on a movie contained in the Horror genre. This is because different people have different reasons why they are watching a film alongside different uses they have from watching that film. Since the horror genre is so diverse, in both subject matter and quality, it is hard to pinpoint an obvious use or gratification for a wide audience. For example, some people may watch the movie Child's Play (Chucky) in order to get scared whereas others may see it as a comedic attempt at a horror movie.

The Uses and Gratifications Theory helps us when creating questions for a questionnaire as it is an easy way to see what it is people want to take away from our movie, from how they want to feel to how they want to act after the credits roll. We can see whether they want the movie to be entertaining in a simple manner, or whether they want to be fully immersed. This could help us during the creation of the movie because it allows us to see what the majority of people want to see and by catering to that expectation we can maximise our audience.