Conventions for Protagonists / Victims- Age and Gender

In my opinion the victims or protagonists in horror films are usually female. For instance in Scream the main character and victim is a female, this is also the case in the Possession, Ouija and the Ring and loads more.

I think recently though there are more victims played by males in horror films, such as Insidious.

For my plot I have chosen to go against the standard conventions and I have cast my victim as a male, however there is also a secondary protagonist which is his sister so I'm not going against the genre conventions completely because horror film fans may be comfortable with the specific conventions and a drastic contrast might not work so well with them.

Horror films are considered by some people more effective in scaring the audience when the victim is played by a child because it's more shocking, some examples of films with child victims are the Possession and the Exorcist.


But this is another convention I have decided to go against as I'm casting my victim as a teenage boy, this is not something that has never been done before (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream etc. ) so again, it's not too different that it makes horror film super fans not enjoy it. I also think that because my target audience is 15-25, using a teenager to portray the victim may create the same effectiveness in scaring the audience as teenagers can relate to the boy and maybe identify with him and the arguements he has with his sister.