Genre Research: Characters

Typical characters: 

• Innocent victims - Usually a woman who lives alone with a normal life and job who plays the protagonist. He/she is fighting either her own fears or a villain. 

• Criminals - e.g Drug dealers/murderers/stalkers

• Menaced woman e.g Gothika, they usually drive themselves insane and to an unstable state. In Girl Interrupted, Angelina Jolie plays a mentally unstable woman who has authority over the other characters

• Psychotic individuals e.g The Shining or someone in a mental institution. Either characters become psychotic from experiences in the film or they start by being normal and end up in a psychotic way. In Black Swan, she starts going insane and imagining things

• Characters with a dark past - In some films, characters appear from nowhere such as a family member who suddenly comes into the story. Sometimes if there is a new relationship in a film, the characters don't know each others past and they come to terms with it when finding out whether its good or bad

• Police - If there is involvement of drugs or crime of some sort such as stalking, usually police are investigating it. They are oblivious to who the antagonist is until the very end of the film

• Stalkers - Some films involved the protagonist being followed and they wouldn't know. This causes tension. The stalker usually is psychologically unstable