Horror Genre Opening Analysis ‘Sinister’

Analysing the opening scene of ‘Sinister’:

The first few seconds are of a blank screen but then it changes. The opening scene is just one long shot, the shot is also establishing as it is shows in a forest in the middle of nowhere. There is just one big tree in the middle with four characters.

The characters have brown sacks on their heads and ropes around their necks therefore creating from the audience an assumption that they’re going to be hung.

The music is very low and quite rough sounding, when there is a blank screen, it creates tension within the audience as they don’t know why the screen is blank for why there is nothing on the screen. When the screen comes on there is a mixture of the off screen non – diegetic sound of the background film score, but also then sounds of the wind in the trees.

The shot is shown through another camera. The film is shown as another screen being watched. The border of the outside area of the screen suggests this. This also suggests that they’re being watched. The audience can infer that the viewer of the murder is the kill itself.

The tension within the audience builds as the murder takes a long time to happen. The clip is 1:11, and only at the very end do they die.

The audience can see that as the bodies are lifted off the floor, a branch is being cut off, this therefore shows that this has been planned and it is set up ready to murder. An enigma is created as the audience don’t know who the characters are or why they’re being murdered or how they got there. The enigma is a horror convention as many horror movies make the audience question.

The characters are seen to be struggling as they’re being hung, the log shot reveals everything that is going on. As there are four victims, the audience can infer that they’re a family which have been targeted. This is also backed up as there seems to be two adults and two children, yet this cannot be confirmed as the faces cannot be seen. However it can be inferred due to their heights.

The camera, once they’ve died just holds on them. The whole screen has no action or movement. Then at the end of the clip, the word sinister appears at the bottom, as if it was a movie, as there is also a off screen sound of film tap being clicked.

The colours used throughout are quite muted tones and are quite dark with mainly browns, blacks, greens and blues. The only brighter colour is the white which is from the word ‘sinister’ at the bottom of the screen.

The whole opening scene is quite calm however from the audience it raises many questions and is quite tense as they don’t know what to expect from the film.