Essay Guidance: Extract

Here is a guide to the way you should write an analysis that includes film language. action description and your personal response. It is only an extract from a larger analysis but may be useful for the style and content of the written work you are producing for your coursework. 

Describe: 

WHAT you see/hear?

+

HOW it is technically constructed?

+

WHY you think it is constructed this way?

 = MEANING

Integrating all aspects in a coherent and clear way to show how meaning is constructed throughout the sequence is the key to achieving a good grade:      

Although this is not a horror film in the purest sense it does use the convention of an open, abandoned space to make the situation more fearful. This is similar to the opening scene of ‘The Shining’ when the mise-en-scene shows that something bad will happen by opening the film with a tracking shot of a single car isolated in countryside. Therefore isolation is a convention of a thriller and horror and can make a character look more vulnerable; suggesting that something bad is going to happen. I feel that the director chose this technique from a horror like ‘The Shining’ as it reinforces the fear of being alone in an open space, especially at night. This allowed me to sympathise with Susie as I would feel vulnerable myself if I were in her position. I particularly felt scared watching this film rather than a conventional horror as these types of murders and rapes happen in real life.

The setting and mise-en-scene of a cornfield has connotations of reaping and sowing, suggesting death and rebirth, a key theme in the film. Cornfields are also used to make associations with young children in the horror genre, for example; 'Children Of The Corn', 'Sleepy Hollow' and 'The Sand'. These examples all use cornfields with some form of scare for children, often using a ‘scarecrow’ to scare them. This occurs in ‘Children of the Corn’ when the mise-en-scene includes a scarecrow to symbolize a threat for the characters and the audience. So I feel that this film has taken the concept of having something in a cornfield to scare or be a danger to children and then adding a real situation; making it more of a thriller than a horror. Also, corn grows in fields, just like a child grows up; so with Susie being attacked in a cornfield it reflects her childhood and how oblivious to danger. Her life is also taken from her prematurely just like corn is cut from life before it dies naturally.  It seems likely that the mise-en-scene location was chosen to represent these themes of innocence, growth and death.