In The Cabin in the Woods trailer, there are several conventions of horror that have been incorporated. Blood and weapons are shown which straight away give off a dangerous feel and shows us that it's a horror genre. Within the first 20 seconds of the film one of the girls says 'doesn't even show up on the GPS'. This already indicates to an audience that danger is ahead of them, if it's not showing on a GPS and they need help, no one will know where to find them. Isolated settings are shown as well in the trailer which is always a recipe for disaster as there is no access to help and something always happens in remote places. The typical conventions of a trailer that worked well in creating suspense was that there was one line used each time. It didn't give away too much of the narrative and the lines used created a picture of peril. In the trailer, one of the main characters suggested they split up and another character said 'really'. This plays up to a stereotypical horror but also subverts at the same time. In a typical horror movie, for some reason the characters decide to split up which allows them to be killed one by one or have mysterious things happen, normally in those horror films the characters agree to it but with the response 'really' it subverts as the character realises that by splitting up it could potentially be more dangerous. One of the characters says 'somebody sent those things here to get us', the word 'things' suggests that the villains of the films aren't humans and it's ambiguous to the audience as you wonder what he means by things. The soundtrack used over the trailer at the end is very fast paced and sounds like screaming which fits well with the horror genre.
This film involves five young people embodying certain archetypes: the whore, the athlete, the scholar, the fool and the virgin. They all contrast with each other as they aren't alike in anyway but surprisingly they are all friends. This film plays up to what typically happens in horror films. Jules is the first to die as she's the 'slut' of the group and normally in horror films its those type of girls that get killed first. In scream one of the rules was 'you may not survive the movie if you have sex', this fits in well with this movie as Jules is not a virgin and is about to have sex and dies. In this movie there was a flexibility of the order of killings but the one rule was that the whore had to die first and the virgin either had to survive or die last which was the case as the whore got killed first and the virgin survived , she maintained her innocence.
I created a collage of images in the trailer that really caught my eye. On the top row on the left, it's clear to see that the person is clearly not human, it looks creature like and shows that something is clearly not right here, there's a state of disequilibrium. The cabin in the second image on the top row shows the isolation of the cabin. It's surrounded by greenery and there are no other cabins or people around. The one way mirror is a bit bizarre in a cabin, it gives the audience a sense of someone being watched unknowingly which is creepy. In the trailer a bird flew into what appears to be an electrical wall which straight away gave the impression that something wasn't right and someone was controlling it. In the second image in the second row, there are several CCTV's which are allowing the teenagers to be watched, I thought this was alarming as it seemed like a game to me, other people are controlling what happens to the teenagers. In the first image on the third row, one of the boys are covered in blood and this shows an audience that something disturbing has occurred. They all look startled and scared which displays fear among them. The second image on the third row shows what appears to be a creature. Looking at the image it's clear to see that it's not human and the teenagers are being chased by creatures. A weapon is shown in one of the images and the situation looks menacing as one of the teenagers is laying on the floor and you anticipate they're about to get hurt but the weapon. 'The secret' gives an element of surprise and darkness to the trailer as an audience will want to know what the secret is. The background colours are black and red. The colour red is the colour of blood and is associated with danger. The colour black shows darkness and mystery which link well with the word 'secret'. A masked identity shows the audience that humans and creatures could potentially be both villains.
No comments:
Post a Comment