Compare how Spielberg and Anenabor succeed in creating suspense in extracts from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and " The Others"

“The Others” is about a family who are ghosts but they don’t realise it. The two children are allergic to the light, so the whole house is extremely dark except one room, “the junk room.” The scene I am focusing on is where the mother hears someone up stairs and about three days ago her daughter had inform her about seeing a ghost. The mothers was annoyed by this and though her daughter was lying, so she told her to stand on the stairs and read the bible out loud until she was prepared to admit she was lying. The mother goes to investigate what the noise is she goes into the junk room. Once she had had a good look around she went down stairs and order her maid to open all the curtains to uncover every dark corner in the house. She finds no one. The little girl had drawn some pictures of what the ghost looked like and by the side of each picture she put the number of how many times she had seen that particular ghost. She showed this to her mother and she was shocked.

In “Close Encounter of the Third Kind” the first shot is of the house, which is in the middle of nowhere. The shot is called an establishing shot, which shows where all the action is taking place. This establishing shot also show that it was a quiet breezy night until all the events started to take place. Then we are taken straight to a close up on the boy (Barry) asleep. In the background we hear a dog bark this may suggest that the aliens are present because the dog has just woken up. The trees outside are rustling and are also casting a shadow over Barry’s pillow. The dog barking wakes Barry but he just lies there for a few seconds. Then all of a sudden this mechanical toy monkey on his dresser begins moving manically, it nosily clashes its two cymbals together. We get a shot of the monkey just clashing away and then other toys start to move, Barry sits up from all the noise and looks around the room. The camera looks at each toy as they start moving as if it was in Barry’s point of view.