Horror

The first horror movie I ever watched was The Amityville Horror, the 2005 remake. I remember feeling scared but I was 11 so I was probably terrified. I was sleeping round my friend’s house which was literally in the middle of nowhere with trees surrounding it. Due to the house being so old there were so many noises that were unexplained and I didn’t sleep for the whole night and was very quick to leave in the morning. When I went back and re-watched the film I didn’t really find it as scary as I had when I was younger. I think this was due to the fact that I knew what was coming. It was also down to the fact that as I had grown up I have seen much scarier films that were way more original. Even if I hadn’t of seen it when I was younger I still would have foreseen some of the things that happened in the film as it was very predictable.

I remember one scene that I found particularly frightening. The kid’s babysitter is dared to hide in the cupboard where this body of a little girl was found. Then with an extreme close up on the door handle, you see it slam shut on its own.  Extreme close ups are usually used to stress something or to show a particular detail that is important. In this circumstance it could be that no one was touching the door as it slammed shut. There is then an extreme close up on the lightbulb that is inside the cupboard where you see it flickering. In this instance the extreme close up hides what else is happening in the cupboard which makes the audience tense and leaves them not knowing what to expect. There is extreme low light in this scene as well which decreases what the audience can see leaving the audience in more suspense. Extreme close ups are used a lot in horror movies as they emphasis little details this is usually put with low light. This reduces what the audience can see. A fear that is played around with a lot in the horror genre is fear of the Unknown.

The next interesting shot is from inside the cupboard looking out from the babysitter’s perspective; there are lines going across the screen to so only small strips of the scene are shown. She can see a little girl on the bed who warned her about going into the cupboard and she seems less than interested. There are then more scenes like this where you can see the other two boys trying to get the door open. Children are used a lot in horror movies, for example the shining, the woman in black and the grudge. I think that this is because the audience sees children as innocents and if they are killed then that means the killer or bad guy is horrifically evil and when the children are the evil ones it is disconcerting as they are the exact opposite to what we picture them as being.