The Haunting In Connecticut.

Alright, so I'm back again guys but this time I'm going to be analysing the opening of a movie of our chosen genre and the movie that I have chosen to do is The Haunting in Connecticut (2009) and I'm basically going to be reviewing the camera angles and the camera movements and talk about what kind of effect that this will have on the audience and I might even talk about denotation and connotation, doesn't that sound exciting?

Okaaay then, so as the film company names roll we get our non-diagetic sound of a piano playing and then it starts off with a close up of a black and white photograph of a family, who's identity is currently unknown. The picture consists of four people, a man dressed in a suit and a woman both of whom have medium shots and then another two people whom have a close up and they're made to look even more intimidating because they have all deadly straight faces.

Then at 0:52 we cut to another black and white photo of two girls, both of which have have medium shots and the suspense is built up because for one thing we have no idea who any of the people are, or in fact if they are going to play any kind of part in the movie later on, or if they were related to the family in the previous picture.

We then get a snapshot of medical clamps, a close up along with some kind of shadow in the background which again makes the audience want to know who it is and what they are doing and apart from the music all is silent making the scene of the photographs all the more eerie and unnerving. Then like the last shot, almost too quick to see we see some kind of liquid being pored and then we get back to the black and white photographs.

In order to build up the suspense of the moment we get snapshots of blood being poured down a drain and the medical equipment implying that not all is as it seems and this helps to establish it as a horror. However as we reach the end of the photo montage the music becomes more distorted and frightening as we go on to find out more about the photographs and yes I will be giving away the twist here but basically the people were taking pictures of them with their dead relatives, creepy right?

We then see a lot of close ups of things that are hard to distinguish at first because the audience is not given enough time to identify what it is that they are being shown but this just goes on to further provoke questions and therefore developing the plot line more by making the audience want to know what is going to happen. We then see a big close up of a corpse lying on a table as a man moves around him and we see nothing but his hands as we are proceeded with a jump cut to the corpse being covered and then we go back to the photos as though nothing has happened but the tension of the scene is amplified as the audience is being kept on the edge of their seats, wanting to know what happens.

We then proceed to receive more images of loved ones dead, as their mourning relatives take pictures of them, or with them I should say but now that we know a bit more about the situation it is anything but comforting as the music picks up in pace and becomes more and more chaotic, almost psychotic as the audience is made to feel disgusted by what they have seen. We also receive non-diagetic sound of a camera flashing loudly as each new image is revealed. There are more jump-cuts after this of someone performing some kind of surgery of a corpse but whether or not it is the same corpse as before it would be hard to tell.

The camera angles in the first minute are all close ups to medium shots and the camera is held steady making the whole scene all the more uncomfortable to watch.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRJA3lN0xCQ Alright so this is the link to the trailer if you lovely people fancy having nightmares for a week :P