A Log and Analysis of Horror Movie's Viewed

As a part of our research we watched a few horror films, to see what they are like, how they are similar, how they are different, what conventions they used, and what about the film made us scared.



Gothika

The first film we watched was Gothika, starring Hale Berry, Penelope Cruz and Robert Downey Jr., released in 2004. The film is about Dr. Miranda Grey (Barry) is a brilliant criminal psychiatrist. However, after a road accident, she wakes up only to find that she has been convicted for the murder of her husband Doug. With only fragmented memories of the alleged crime, she begins to dig deeper into her husband's past. Meanwhile she is being haunted by the ghost of a girl called Rachel who is seemingly trying to convey a message to her with the phrase 'not alone.' As Miranda learns more about her husband with clues from Rachel, she realizes that Doug is not who he seems at all.

There are obviously quite a lot of conventions of horror used in Gothika, the eerie music, storms and flashing lights, isolated building set in the woods, screaming, whispering voices, heavy breathing, and someone you can’t see writing on the wall, spirits.

What personally scared me about Gothica was near the beginning there was a thunder storm, the lightning and the office lights flickering, I didn’t like this because it gave me the sense that someone was going to jump out in the dark, and I didn’t like the suspense of waiting for something to happen. I also didn’t like the whispering voices or the fact there was a tormentor that we could not see, again it was the suspense of waiting for something to jump out of the dark.

Dark WaterThe second horror movie we watched was a Japanese film, called Dark Water, I only saw the beginning of the film as I missed the next lesson we watched it in, but even the beginning of the film was creepy.

I looked up the plot synopsis to see what the film was about, a mother and daughter move into a new, run down apartment which has a leek in the ceiling. The daughter finds a red bag on the roof which was previously owned by a child living in the apartment above, but went missing a year previous after her mother abandoned her. The red bag is then a symbol for strange events, the bag is disposed of yet the mother finds it again, the leek worsens, and it appears that her daughter talks to the missing girl whilst in the bath. The mother is drawn to the roof, where she inspects the water tank, she figures out, through a vision that the little girl fell in the tank while trying to receive her bag when the tank was being fixed. The tank begins to dent out and bang, the mother runs back down to the apartment, where she had left her daughter alone.

The daughter is desperately trying to turn the taps off, which have begun to spurt out dirty brown water; the dead spirit of the girl rises from the water and attempts to drown the living girl. The mother finds her daughter lying unconscious on the bathroom floor, picks her up and runs out of the apartment, she turns to see it is her own daughter she is being followed by, and is carrying the reincarnated spirit of the dead girl, she figures out that she will have to sacrifice her own life, to give this child a mother to save her own daughters life. The lift opens and she is drowned in the dirty brown water. The daughter watches on tearfully and runs down to the next floor, to find the lift empty. It ends with the daughter returning to the flat when she is 16 and sees her mother, she talks with her, and then her mother disappears.

This film is slightly different to other stories, usually the dead try to revenge their own deaths, but in this the dead is only trying to find a companion.

The conventions used in this film were a rundown setting, eerie music, shadows, weird footsteps and protagonist that you can not initially see.

What I found personally creepy about this film is that there are children involved, which I don’t like, and also the fact that you don’t know who or what has died in the building, so it is unknown for some time.

The Shining After watching Dark Water, we watched The Shining, released 28th May 1980, and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The film is based on the novel, with the same title, by Stephen King, it is about a former teacher and a recovering alcoholic, Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson), who is made redundant after he looses his temper in his class. He is interviewed for a job at the Overlook Hotel, to be the winter caretaker. He is warned by the hotel manager, Mr. Ullman, that they will be snowed in for the winter and there is a chance of cabin fever, and that the previous caretaker, Charles Grady, went crazy and killed his wife and two daughters brutally. Jack Torrance, acknowledges the warning, but is desperate for a job, and feels that it is a chance to pursue his passion for writing.

His son Danny, has a seizure while talking to his imaginary friend, Tony, about the hotel and has visions of blood spilling out of the elevator, an image which is revisited through out the film.

At the Overlook Hotel the head chef, Dick Halloran, recognises that Danny has a special gift and talks to him telepathically , he tells him that he has the same gift and that it is called ‘the shining’. He tells Danny that something bad had happened in the hotel before and had left a trace but only people with the gift could tell, and also that Danny should not go into room 237.
Jack’s mental state deteriorates everyday, he hardly sleeps and he becomes irritable towards his family. The little boy Danny continues to have visions of the two murdered little girls, and wonders more about room 237.
A ball rolls from room 237 towards Danny and he goes to inspect where it has come from. Wendy, Jack’s wife, heard Jack screaming and goes to see to him, and he tells her that he had a nightmare in which he used an axe to chop her and Danny into pieces. Danny then appears sucking his thumb, with rips in his jumper and bruises on his neck; he refuses to tell his mother what happened. Wendy quickly accuses Jack of hurting Danny and takes Danny to their hotel suite.
Jack, angry about the accusation, goes to the Gold Room and sits down at the bar declaring he would sell his soul for a drink. He is not fazed by the sudden appearance of the bar tender and he even uses his name, Lloyd, the conversation leads us to find out that Jack had once accidentally hurt Danny. Wendy enters telling him that Danny is claiming to have encountered a ‘crazy woman’ in room 237.
When Jack goes to investigate room 237, he hears someone in the bathroom, he goes to look and sees a young, attractive woman, she gets out of the bath and approaches him, and the two of them embrace and kiss passionately, when he catches a glimpse of her reflection and she is a rotting corpse. He pushes her away and the old rotten lady holds her arms out after him. He rushes from the room and locks the door.
He does not tell Wendy what happened in the room, and she suggests taking Danny to a doctor. This makes Jack angry and starts blaming Wendy for everything that went wrong in his life, he tells her that she is irresponsible and that they can not leave because of his obligation to his employers. He returns to the Gold room, which is now an extravagant scene from a 1920’s party. A Butler runs into him and spills advocaat on his jacket, the waiter insists that he comes to the rest rooms to be cleaned up. The waiter introduces himself as Delbert Grady, Jack remembers the story that Mr. Ullman told him and asks Grady about it. He tells Jack that he has been the only caretaker of the hotel and that there was no other Grady. Jack is confused but accepts the story. Grady then continues to tell Jack that his son Danny is trying to use his gift to bring in outsiders to the hotel and he advises on how to correct Danny and his wife Wendy if she interferes.
In Florida, Dick Halloran is failing to contact the overlook hotel to check on them and decides to book a flight to get there.
Wendy takes a baseball bat and goes to look for Jack; she is intent on leaving the hotel with or without Jack. While she is looking she comes across his typewriter and the manuscript next to it, curious, she reads what he has been writing but it is just page upon page of the same phrase ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’. This is when she works out that Jack has gone crazy.
Jack enters behind her, and asks ‘How do you like it?’ there is a confrontation between the two, resulting in Wendy knocking Jack out the baseball bat and he falls down the stairs that she was trying to escape up. She drags him to the kitchens and locks him in the pantry.
A few hours later Jack is woken by Delbert Grady’s voice who tells Jack that he is disappointed in him and shows a lack of confidence in Jack. Jack assures Grady that he can get the job done and the door suddenly becomes unlocked.
Wendy has fallen asleep in her room, and Danny enters a trance, carrying a knife and repeating ‘REDRUM’. He takes Wendy’s lipstick writing REDRUM on the door of the bathroom and begins shouting it, Wendy wakes up and holds Danny, she then sees the reflection of the bathroom door in the mirror and reads ‘MURDER’.
There is a banging sound at the door; it is Jack swinging an axe at the locked door. Wendy grabs Danny and locks them in the bathroom, she opens the tiny window and pushes Danny out , he slides down a snow drift that has built up outside and is safe, Wendy tells him to go and hide.
Jack has proceeded to chop down the front door, and knocks politely, Wendy steadies herself with a knife and Jack begins to hack at the door, once he had got rid of a few panels he sticks his head through and shouts ‘HEEERREEESSS JOHHHNNNYYY’ (which has become an iconic moment of Horror Movie History). He puts his hand though the gap to grab the handle and Wendy slashes his hand with the knife. They both here a low rumble of a Snow cat approaching and Jack walks out to find out who it is.
The driver was Dick Halloran and inside the hotel he calls out to see if anyone is there, Jack jumps out from behind a pillar and stabs him in the chest with the axe. Danny cries out from a kitchen cupboard where he is hiding, revealing his location. He runs out of the hotel followed by Jack.
Wendy has collected herself and is out looking for Danny, she encounters ghosts along the way but does not let them faze her. At the same time Jack wielding the axe follows Danny into the hedge maze.
Danny realises he is leaving footsteps in the snow and that is how Jack is following him through the maze. He carefully retraces his steps and hides behind another hedge; Jack then realises the foot prints have disappeared but continues down another path on pursuit of Danny. Danny then follows his own foot prints out of the maze.
Wendy runs out of the hotel just as Danny come out of the maze, she throws down the knife and hugs her son, and you hear Jack let out a loud scream. Wendy and Danny escape in the snow cat. Jack who is lost in the maze freezes to death.
Just before the end credits the audience is shown a photograph hanging in the hotel of the Gold room, it is of a ball and in the centre of the picture is a young Jack. The photo is dated ‘Overlook Hotel, July 4th Ball, 1921’
There are quite a few conventions included in this film, they are in an isolated setting, which had a history, and they are secluded from civilisation, the characters seeing things. Creepy music, which sometimes amounts to something and sometimes does not, builds the tension. Visions which we are not sure are real or not.
The repetition of phrases, like the documents and also ‘REDRUM’, also the trapped feeling continues into the maze.

Out of all the horror movies we watched, and others I have seen, this is my favourite because I like the way it kept me intrigues and wanting to know if the visions were real and how Jack could talk to the people from the past of the hotel. The twist that the child could see and sense things but could not always voice the warning, also because I feel more for films where children are in trouble so I wanted the little boy to be safe at the end.

I didn’t think it was as scary as the other films, but the story line was better and more twisted then the others, it was hard to work out what was happening in this, rather then working it out in the other films. I couldn’t predict what was going to happen.

For me one of the scariest moments was in the maze, I just wanted Danny to be safe, and I was relieved when they got out of the maze and away from the hotel. The suspense of the chase, would he catch up with him, will he escape, all the questions kept me intrigued.