AS Film Studies

The story of the toad in the tree is very similar to Ofelia’s mother’s pregnancy. The baby is making her unwell just like the toad is making the tree. This creates a parallel early on in the film from the real world to the fantasy world and shows that the fantasy world is affected by the real world. When Ofelia enters the tree, we can straight away hear the sound of squelching which really adds to the grotesque aesthetic of the film and begins to create a picture of a disgusting place. The shot of Ofelia’s ribbon blowing away in the wind foreshadow the trouble she is going to get into after this quest which makes it more sinister. The grotesque insects crawling around inside the tree represent life and the frog seems to be eating away at it, the bugs are crawling all over Ofelia almost as though they are guiding her or begging for her help. The long shot of Ofelia as she is crawling through the tree establishes the fact that the tree is dying, the roots seem blackened and some are b...

In the first the mid-shot of the door shows the above light flickering off and on this foreshadows that the nature of the heroin addiction is constantly making Renton go back, although at this point we have hope for him it shows that it is going to be a constant struggle between dark and light. In addition to this the low-key lighting of the toilet door reinforces the aesthetic of the scene because it’s one of lowest moments of Renton’s addiction. The subtitle that appears on the screen creates an extra layer of grotesque comedy, in this frame the mise en scene of the strained door and toilet sign represent how Renton’s life’s been stained by the horrors of addiction. On top of this the toilet sign is also slanted suggesting that heroin creates a crooked life. Contextually at the time Scotland was very divided from the rest of the UK because of Margret Thatcher’s early introduction of the poll tax in Scotland, which could explain why it is the worst toilet in Scotland rather than th...

The very first shot establishes the time of day as it is the behind shot of the car in a dark carpark, it also shows us that the car will become significant later on in the sequence, also it is pouring rain, which is pathetic fallacy and gives an overall mood to the scene, I think it makes it seem dreary and perhaps lonely. The next shot is a dolly in to Jake Gyllenhaal, and I noticed he is in a completely empty restaurant which could show that he is lonely however I also noticed he had put his coat on the chair next to him, these examples of mise-en-scene say that Gyllenhaal’s character is lonely but that is the way he prefers it, or maybe that he has chosen to be alone. When the waitress is talking to Jake Gyllenhaal, there is never a shot on her face, and the only time when her face is at all visible is at the beginning when the camera dollies in, and even then she is out of focus. This could mean the Gyllenhaal’s character has no real relationships and therefore he fills this vo...

The first shot of the sequence is a mid-shot of Mia Wasikowska who plays Edith Cushing lying down and the camera dollies out to reveal she is lying in a bed, the lighting is very lowkey and it’s made obvious that it is night time, the bed seems quite antique and from what is visible so does the room she is in giving a sense of ghostliness, a behind shot then makes the viewer aware that there is an empty space in the bed, instantly giving the scene an eerie feel. As the character Edith wakes up also the sound of a dog barking comes into earshot as well as some dissonant music, this non-diegetic and diegetic sound mix to give the viewer an uneasy feeling and create a sense of suspense. In the next frame, we see the dog coming into view which lowers the suspense because the sound now has a definite source, perhaps giving the viewer a false sense of security. The scene then cuts to a mid-shot of Edith and in this frame, we see only Edith and a candle which is giving off a significant ...

‘Heathers’ is possibly one of the darkest teen movies ever written, as it mocks the American school system’s dismissal of deep psychological issues most teenagers face, whether they are the bullies or the bullied. In the film, main character Veronica (Winona Ryder) accidentally kills the height of popularity, Heather Chandler (Kim Walker) and makes it look like a suicide, therefore setting up a strange kind of trend. The dark humour and strange characters make it so different from all the rest, and the perfect display of mob psychology in schools across America leaves viewers wondering whether they should laugh or cry. One of the most memorable scenes is Heather C’s funeral. The scene begins with a low angled shot on the priest which shows the dominance of religion, this could be mocking the idea of religion, and how little it manages to help the young people in the film. The priest then explains how “video games” and “MTV” were the cause of Heather’s “suicide” providing a humorou...

The modern slasher horror film has gone quite unnoticed compared to other films in the way that it heavily enforces gender roles. Since the beginning of horror gender has been a huge part of the story with the “damsel-in-distress” generic foundations. However recently, a new common plot line has emerged, one where a murderer or supernatural being kills a group of people one by one until the last person who either kills the enemy or escapes. The main issue many people have with these plot lines are tropes, which is the idea that certain characters are almost always certain genders. The most discussed out of all of the tropes is the idea that the last person alive is almost always a woman, and referred to by critics as “the Final Girl”. However which horror films have challenged this protocol and are they still effective despite going against the generalised format of most big budget films? The idea of “the Final Girl” is that they are resourceful and intelligent, but they never actu...