Conventions of a slasher trailer

As well as all of the conventions of a typical film trailer, there are some extra conventions that we discovered are common of slasher trailers. Through watching the trailers for Psycho, Friday the 13th, and Scream, we compiled another list suited to slasher trailers:

• Some kind of pain inflicted on the characters.
• Dark, mysterious setting (not a lot of colour).
• Screams follow by eerie silences.
• An iconic weapon.
• The trailer could start off happy to give the audience a false sense of security before scaring them to death.
• The killer is not revealed.
• There is some sort of music motif associated with the killer.
• A lot of the trailer is seen form the killer's viewpoint.
• There may be a red herring - you are lead to believe that the killer is someone they are not.