Conventions In The Lost Boys

The Lost Boys by Joel Schumacher exploits some conventions of the horror genre yet also inverts others. Like in any horror film, they come with the creaking doors, intense music and desire to solve all mysteries including the unexplained and the film, The Lost Boys doesn’t fall short. This vampire filled, popcorn flick includes many of the standard features of the horror genre but also includes inverted and reversed some conventions.

To start off, the most obvious aspect of the horror genre that is in this film is vampires as they are a supernatural creature. The Vampires in the film are what you would expect; blood-sucking beasts with their sharp teeth, which sleep upside down, cast no reflection and who are afraid of sunlight. But that’s not all of it.

There is an evil leader in the film, who is Max but this isn’t evident until the end of the film because he was seen as an innocent man from Lucy’s eyes which meant she was constantly defending him. Also when he was invited over by Lucy, he made the man of the house, Michael invite him inside which in a way, hide his true identity. Therefore when the Frog brothers conducted a series of tests
What everyone would perceive to be as a normal Grandpa is fairly the opposite of the character in this film. He’s a joker who drinks root beer and lives in a creepy house with dead stuffed animals. An example of Grandpa playing jokes is when Lucy and the boys arrive at his house and he is lying on the porch pretending to be dead. This creates anticlimax which would mainly fall into the standard conventions of a horror film. Another example is at the end of the film when all the vampires are killed and Grandpa goes to the fridge to get a drink and says "Something I never could stomach about Santa Carla, all the damn vampires!" which indicates that he knew about the vampires all along. Overall, Grandpa is an unusual character that adds plenty of humour to the