Written Analysis-Macro Reading
Narrative and Genre

“Stephen King’s IT” is a horror film with many conventions from other different genres such as fantasy and mystery.

The introduction of the film starts with photographs, appearing on screen, that are black and white. The audience realises that this film will be set before colour photographs, so around the 1960’s. The sound in the opening is quite eerie to the audience because of the piano used in the opening theme; this sort of music is used in the horror genre to make the audience feel tension for example, the theme tune of the “Halloween” movies. The pictures are mainly of children and houses and later on in the movie these pictures are owned by Michael Hanlon, one of the seven heroes (Propp). The pictures of children are shown because the whole movie is based around children and family. The photos are held together by red slots; red is an intimidating colour and is often used in horror movies. The final picture contains a theatre with the movie showing “I am a teenage werewolf” and there are old cars parked outside but the picture fades out, becomes animated and sets a modern day scene as the cars and the theatre become modernised. This tells the audience that the time is now after the photos. “Stephen King’s IT” does not follow a classical narrative structure because it starts in the middle, then the beginning and finishes with the end. This is also a few seconds of equilibrium at the beginning of the movie.

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The camera pans upwards to show the weather and sky as a huge lightening bolt jolts across giving more tension to the audience causing some disequilibrium. One of the main questions of the film is “what are you afraid of?” Perhaps the bolt jolting across is a reflection upon the fact that some people are afraid of lightening. This weather also indicates something bad is going to happen. Wind is used for the same purpose and diagetic sounds of wind howls are used to make the audience feel alarmed.

The movie begins as a child sings a nursery rhyme, “insy ...

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