Emotional pleasures

The emotional pleasures offered to the audiences of genre films are particularly significant when they generate a strong audience response. Horror, comedy or melodrama for example are generically designed to make audiences feel emotional in a particular way.
Visceral pleasures

Visceral pleasures (visceral refers to internal organs) are defined by how the film's stylistic construction elicits a physical effect upon its audience. This can be revulsion, kinetic speed or a roller coaster ride for example it has a PHYSICAL effect.
Intellectual puzzles

Certain film genres such as the thriller and the 'whodunnit' offer the pleasure of trying to unravel a mystery or a puzzle. Scream, although primarily a horror film, draws upon the conventions of the whodunnit and much of the pleasure of watching the film comes from analysing the suspects, their motives, and the clues. Pleasure is derived from deciphering the plot and forecasting the end or being surprised by the unexpected.
Counter-culture attraction

Rick Altman (1999) argues that one of the primary pleasures offered to audiences by gene films is the release from cultural rules and regulations. Audiences can abandon themselves to the pleasure of actions that break with established moral or legal regulations
Counter-reading of genre films

Generic pleasure can take place from a counter reading of the 'repertoire of elements' Altman argues that many fan groups create their own genres out of their own shared interests. For example, train enthusiasts have defined their own genre of 'railway films'.
Genre communities

Genre criticism tends to discuss audiences of a particular genre in broad terms, suggesting that gene films are designed to be recognised by mass audiences whereas in fact, each genre has its own audience. Audiences for war movies are not necessarily the same as audiences for horror films Some audience groups, according to Altman, create 'cultural communities of fans, often based upon a shared recognition of the counter-cultural pleasures offered by a gene. Considered in this manner, films are not just a content and a form transmitted by producers to consumers, they are also the medium of an additional mode of communication that groups of consumers carry cut with each other (Altman. 1999) Altman goes on to suggest that the common assumption that genre films share a repertoire of elements is only part of the equation. A genre may only exist when it has came to service a community of audiences who recognise the same repertoire of elements