Halloween made the audience experience fear and terror throughout as the suspenseful stalkings and killings are seen from the point of the killer’s eyes, a few times looking through the mask, this makes us as an audience feel more involved in the film and therefore feel more fear towards the people getting chased/killed. Other scenes are viewed through the eyes of the characters in danger or by heavy breathing of Michael Myers, this builds suspense for us a viewer and we wonder what will happen next when we most expect it. Almost every scene is filmed with the camera consistently moving around to make the audience feel disordered, totally insecure, unsettled and paranoid, believing that every looming corner, shadow, noise, or shape is potentially life threatening or dangerous and that everyone is a helpless victim of violence. Often, when we expect something to appear nothing is revealed, but sometimes the unexpected is shockingly viewed.
We recognize that Halloween is a horror film from the generic conventions within the text, these include, the mask which means mystery and suspicion for the audience, darkness which is similar for every horror film as it seems more scary and troubling. The large house is a typical American house where many crimes are committed within horror films.
The major iconographic features of the film are the knife which symbolizes death and murder and also the mask which makes us wonder who is behind it and is very mysterious.
The kind of audience which Halloween is likely to attract is most likely to be American teens that are around the age of 18, or maybe younger. This is because there are teenagers within the film and this means that they can probably relate to it better.
The ideology behind Halloween is that virgin girls will look up to “Laurie” and feel that being a virgin isn’t bad, as “Laurie” was the heroine in Halloween. Whereas the sexually active teens were the victims therefore other audience viewers who are not virgins may feel more worried and insecure after watching Halloween.
Laurie is being represented as an innocent virgin woman who loves children and her friends, like the perfect teenage woman should be. Whereas her friends are being represented as rebellious, sexually active and careless, in other words the stereotypical teen. Michael Myers is seen as evil and has no emotions which make us see straight away as the bad guy. They are being represented this way so that the audience is clear who is good and who is bad, and we have a clearer view of the character.
The other film which I am analyzing is “Evil Dead” by Sam Raimi. This film was made in 1981 and is considered to be a cult classic of the horror genre. In England the movie was one of the first to be labelled as a video nasty and was only released uncut in 2001. Because of its graphical violence, the original version of the movie was banned in several countries including Germany and Ireland.
After the success of Evil Dead, two more sequels were made, Evil Dead 2 (1987) and Army of Darkness (1993). Each sequel came across as more humorous than the original one, so much that Army of Darkness isn’t even considered as a horror film and has been named as a splatstick, a mix of a splatter film and slapstick film.
Many references have been made to the Evil Dead in other horror films, including Scream, Donnie Darko and Shaun of the Dead.
The type of audience that the Evil Dead is likely to attract is likely to be Young males who enjoy gory movies as gore appears too often in the film and may disturb people who do not like violence and blood.
The Evil dead is recognized as a horror film from the generic conventions within the film. The major one being the cabin in the middle of a deserted wood in the nighttime with fog surrounding it, this is typical of a horror film as it makes the audience feel uneasy and a feel of suspicion to the events about to happen. Another generic convention are the teenagers involved in the movie, everything bad always happens to teenagers in a horror film therefore we can read into the film more.
The major iconographic features of the text are the gun which means trouble is going to happen sometime in the film and also the zombies create fear for the audience who are watching as we don’t know what to expect next but we also know they are not real so are more at ease than of we were watching Halloween with the masked psycho killer.
In Evil Dead Ash is being represented as the good guy and the innocent one as he is the only one who hasn’t turned into a zombie and tries hard to stop his friends from doing so but in the end fails. We think that he has survived as it turns to morning and is no longer dark and foggy, until a mysterious figure comes towards him and kills him, this figure we do not see so leaves us wondering what it could be and leaves on a cliffhanger.
In conclusion I believe that Halloween was the more fearful film as it felt as though it could happen in real life and it also built up more suspense and made me jump more than Evil Dead. I feel that Evil Dead had too much gore in and was more unbelievable as we know that zombies are not real. Both films build tension through music and both films deceive the audience at times as sometimes we think that something bad will happen but it doesn’t, an example of this is in Evil Dead when Scotty goes to check on Shelby he opens the door and music builds up, we expect something to happen but it doesn’t, this makes us watch the film to find out.
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