2nd Movie Review: Silent Hill

Favourite Image Analysis: Sinister

This scene from Sinister is one of the recurring scenes of Ellison’s projector going off for unknown reasons. This scene has parallel music played over the top of the sound of the projector playing. This scene cuts between Ellison staring blankly at the camera and the camera on with no one beside it, and this example of "collision cutting" maximises the emotional effect of each scene. 

The movie being played in the background is rather shocking and quite explicit even to be shown nowadays. During the 1930s when the Hays Code applied this sort of footage would not have been able to be shown but now the code does not apply and has died out. Throughout the whole of the film there is a lot of restricted narration and we rarely see any blood and gore all at once. The whole film is set in a creepy location, a house in the middle of the woods with a spooky background to it. The monster in this film is not a realistic monster but is more of a psychotic serial killer who gets young children to do the dirty work. With society today, this could be seen as very risqué as using children to do the dirty work is something that happens in everyday life. Children are perceived as innocent so this contradicts the audience's expectations of a stereotypical child. The theme constantly running throughout the film is a fear of death and violence, due to being watched by the Bughuul; some people may also relate to this as paedophilia which again is a very common worry in this day and age. 

This film backs up everything Thomas Schatz has to say about the importance of genre in film in his book Hollywood Genres (1981). Schatz believed that maintaining enough variety in a film was important to keep the audience interested and enough repetition to make the film enjoyable, this was shown by the recurring manslaughter home movies. Overall, I feel as though Sinister bought a new 12 rated psychological genre of horror to the industry and the film proved to be very popular making $43,931,872 box office profit.

Dawn of the Dead Image Analysis (2004)

This scene of Ana gazing longingly into the distance is due to the fact, Kenneth, has broken the news to her about him being bitten by a zombie. Kenneth, being the courageous man he is, chooses not to go on, and lets the rest of the survivors sail free to safety, or what we believe is safety. Kenneth, although he does not survive, has been portrayed at the male hero. This is a collision cut between Ana looking into the distance at Kenneth, and Kenneth with a swarm of zombies behind him gazing at Ana in the distance. Instead of leaving himself for the Zombies to kill him, Kenneth gets his gun (a phallic symbol) and shoots himself in the head through his mouth. We do not see any of the blood or gore but we just get the restricted narration of a distant fun shot and Ana with a tear in her eye. As the survivors set sail into the distance, we are lead to believe the film ends with a more or less happy ending, but this is not the case. As they draw close to land they are attacked by zombies and we then have to assume that they do not make it but we are left with an open ending. The critic Andre Bazin was interested in the development of early film narrative. Bazin was mainly focused on how carefully the structure of a film was. At the beginning of the 1930s, the hays code was put into place meaning a lot of films were either banned or simply not made. Restricted narration meant films could still stick to their original story line, but could get away with killings as long as they were not seen, e.g the suicide of Kenneth.

Dawn of the Dead Image Analysis (2004)

Here we have a shot of Ana and Steve, just as Steve has turned into a Zombie. Ana is not your typical female in a horror movie. Normally the blonde haired female, is your stereotypical female victim, but Ana, is a female survivor. As we can see, Ana has her hair tied up. This generally connotes a character as being a more tough, more of a tomboy. Ana is holding what would usually be found in a male hand rather than a females as a gun is classed as a phallic symbol (something relating to male power). Janet Staiger looked at how audiences respond to films. In eras with high censorship, certain things which were more shocking people would react more strongly to, for example Ed Gein. If this scene of a woman killing a man was shown at an earlier time period, the audience may have caused an outrage at the thought of a woman being more powerful than a man, especially at a time when women still had no rights.

Dawn of the Dead Image Analysis (2004)

This shot is from the opening title sequence of Dawn of the Dead (2004). Here we have a picture of a religious community who all obey to the same rules. This scene represents the zombies as if the zombies are all in their own community. This scene is made up of a lot of shots all put together (a montage). The context of this film is institutional. It sends out the message that we are all turning into one big group of people, brainwashed by people who tell us what we need and don’t need. One of the realisms of the movie is how the characters become too attached to their loved ones to shoot them, even when they become zombies. When something is more real in a film it keeps the audience more interested and is more relatable to the audience. The critic Thomas Schatz believed that the genre of the film is more important than the context or auteur, and that keeping the audience interested is vital.

Dawn of the Dead Image Analysis

This shot is from the security cameras point of view. Despite everything that is going on at this point of the movie, having all that power and money, seems to make the characters happy. This shows the influence of George Romero as an auteur. George Romero believed that the world during the 1970s, everyone was being brainwashed by fame, fortune and brands. This is reflected in the film by the swarm of zombies flocking to the shopping mall as a natural instinct. Also the thought of a black good guy as frowned upon during this time. George Romero believed that everyone should be treated the same and used the Peter, the black guy, as one of the main character who survives at the end. If black people ever were in a stereotypical horror/action film, you could be pretty sure that they would be the one to die first or at some point in the movie, whereas peter is perceived as the male hero in the film.

Dawn of the Dead Image Analysis

This is one of the few gory scenes in Dawn of the Dead. We have a close up to emphasise the goriness of the scene. George Romero was an auteur and liked to lull us into a false sense of security. By really emphasising on the gore back in the 1970s, was a big thing and stuck with the films audience. Dawn of the Dead was banned in Germany, Finland and Norway when it was originally released as it was one of the most shocking films about at the time. In the 1979 film, the Zombies are more of a slow moving monster than a fast moving monster compared to the 2005 remake of the film. The context of this film was very much institutional. Shopping malls were still fairly new at the time and for all this blood and gore to be shown in something so mainstream as a shopping centre it was very realistic to the audience. Each shopping mall scene presents the theme of loneliness or fear of being trapped as throughout the whole film once they are in there, the first thing they do is look for an escape.

Dawn of the Dead Image Analysis

This scene says a lot about the context of the film. At the time this film was made, shopping malls were fairly new and many Americans had been brainwashed into doing their entire shopping under one roof. When the majority of the population in Dawn of the Dead (1979) had been turned unto zombies it is ironic that the first place most of them flock to is the big shopping mall. Despite the zombies waddling about half dead, they look very lost and a bit confused. This was also how people felt during their first experience at one of these big shopping centres. If we was to take a picture of everyone in a shopping mall nowadays a similar brainwashed look might be found on people’s faces. Consumerism is an ideology where people are encouraged to buy things just to make them happy. This is an establishing shot to set the scene. George Romero liked to include his own thoughts in his work. George Romero was an auteur.

Psycho Image Analysis

This is an extreme close up shot of Marion after she has been killed by who we are lead to believe is Norman’s mother. The close up shot is there to make the audience fell uncomfortable and to feel emotion. Close ups like this can also make people feel slightly claustrophobic and uneasy. What looks like a tear is actually water from the shower. If someone was to see this picture that hadn’t seen the film they would assume it was a tear. Marion has the shower curtain pulled across before we see her killer which makes her very confined, almost trapped. The fact that Marion is naked in the shower, adds to the idea that her killer is a sadist. In this scene we also see a bit of blood and gore. It appears swirling around the plug hole, just like how the camera spins out from Marion’s eye. This is very much like a Kuleshov effect with the two shots helping us understand Marion’s life is swirling away. This also follows the classic psycho scene with the sharp, parallel music in the background. This scene is a very long shot in terms of time for a horror sequence which contrasts with the quickness of the shower scene. This is Hitchcock using collision cutting, making the shower scene more fast and brutal and this scene slower and sad.

Psycho Image Analysis

This is the scene in Norman Bates’ office which is next to room 1 where Marion is placed. The peep hole is actually placed behind a picture which adds to the effect of being watched and being trapped. Laura Mulvey’s theory and ideas on the male gaze are put into practise in this seen. Here we are put in the position of being a voyeur like Norman which can be very uncomfortable for the viewer. Alfred Hitchcock was an auteur very much like the critic behind the theory, Andrew Sarris. In real like, Hitchcock was a voyeur himself. He once invited a lot of Hollywood stars to a room and then watched and laughed from behind a two way mirror when they discover he had dyed all the food blue. This is similar situation to this very scene. Norman’s office is a creepy location, with stuffed birds dotted around the room. Marion is perceived as the female victim when we see her through Norman’s peep hole. From this scene we start to feel a sense of voyeurism and sadism, the thought of Norman being a pervert or stalker now comes in to consideration. We see a medium shot of Norman peering through the hole and then a long shot of Marion getting undressed in her room. The peep hole border is around the camera so this has been shot from a point of view angle, drawing us into a situation we do not want to see. 

Psycho Image Analysis

This scene from Psycho (1960) is when we find out that it is not Norman’s mother committing the killings but Norman himself. Throughout the whole film we have been lead to believe that it is Norman’s mother who is killing everyone who arrives at their motel but we never actually see her. This picture in particular is very misleading if you have not watched the whole film. Just before this scene we witness Norman’s mother, dead, in the cellar and straight after we see Norman being caught and deprived of his phallic knife that he aims to kill Lila with. Just 3 years before Psycho, Ed Gein was arrested for a very similar scenario. The idea of a transvestite killer would have been very powerful to audiences in 1960 because it would have reminded them of a real life situation. The mise-en-scenne is also important in this scene Not only is the outside of the house a typical creepy location, but a cellar inside a big, old house adds to the creepiness and the feeling of isolation and claustrophobia. Throughout the whole film we assume that Norman would be the male hero in the end but it turns out that he is actually the psycho serial killer. This end to the narrative goes against Todorov’s ‘classical Hollywood narrative’ and how unhappy/open endings are a generic convention of horror movies. They leave the open chance of a sequel and ensure that people after watching the film feel slightly uneasy that the killer may still be out there.

1st Movie Review: Hatchet