Horror: British Film Review 2 - Saw VI

Saw VI is a 2009 horror film directed by Kevin Greutert from a screenplay written by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan. It is the sixth instalment of the Saw film series and was produced by Mark Burg and Oren Koules of Twisted Pictures and distributed by Lionsgate. Saw VI concludes the second trilogy of the series that focused on the posthumous effects of the Jigsaw Killer and the progression of his successor, Mark Hoffman. In the film, Hoffman sets a new trap for an insurance executive, William Easton, while the FBI trails Peter Strahm, now suspected of being Jigsaw's last accomplice. Saw VI grossed the least amount out of any of the other films in the Saw series; however it received the second best critical response.

Unlike conventional horrors which tend to open with an innocent scene comprising of the protagonist with their family or friends etc, Saw VI dives straight into the action with a shot of a woman in a typical Saw-like trap in a dimly lit concrete room. This low key lighting together with the quick non-diagetic notes and diagetic heavy breathing builds up a quick sense of fear. The camera rotates round the woman several times, ranging from close to medium shots involving quick cuts to build up suspense.

The woman quickly discovers another man she knows in the room, and a television automatically turns on to explain to them the rules of the game. The general outline is that one of them survives, and the other does not. To survive they must be the one who removes the most flesh from their body. There are a lot of handheld, quick cuts between the two characters, to build up even more suspense. We can hear loud screams from both the victims as the camera cuts quickly between close up shots of them cutting into their own skin, this is used to make the viewer cringe and look away in horror and grotesque.

The mise en scéne in this opening sequence is extremely effective, and plays a key role in many elements of the film. We can see everything in this scene has carefully been thought out to portray a sense of horror, varying from the low-key lighting of the room to the rusty, sharp tools used by the victims.

In the background of the shot, we can hear cogs and gears turning, although they are slightly drowned out by the screams of the two characters. The cogs and gears turning portray a sense of urgency, that the two characters do not have much time left before one of them is killed.

Horror: British Film Review 1 - The Descent

The Descent is a 2005 British horror film written and directed by Neil Marshall, in which six women who, having entered an unmapped cave system, become trapped and hunted by subterranean flesh-eating Morlock-esque humanoids.

The Descent rose over $57 million at the international box office, and received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Bloody Disgusting ranked the film third in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article saying "One of the scariest films of this or any decade... Ultimately, The Descent is the purest kind of horror film – ruthless, unforgiving, showing no mercy."

The opening titles are edited to symbolise one of the main elements of the film; that is the six women can’t always see what’s going on due to the lack of light, which they resolve with their use of flashlights. To symbolise this in the titles, the titles have a “wipe” effect, where you can only see a few letters of the title at any one time, and there’s a flashlight-esque light source behind the words. This can be seen in the screenshot below.

The opening minutes are fairly innocent, with 3 women white-water rafting, having fun. The lighting is bright here which matches the harmonic non-diagetic sounds. However this calmness is broken when, on their way home in the car, they are involved in a collision which proves fatal for their daughter when she’s impaled by a long metal spike.

A year later, after the woman has overcome the initial heartbreak from the loss of her daughter, she goes on an expedition inside a cave system with 5 other women. As they are on their way in the car, typical horror music can be heard in the background of the clip as they drive through a darkened, overshadowed forest, this builds up suspense.

When they enter the cave system, there are several high-angle shots of the woman’s faces, to show their expressions of marvel and disbelief of the beauty of the cave system. Long non-diagetic notes are played to represent these feelings; however this serenity is broken when a crowd of bats fly out of a dark corner into one of the woman, accompanied by a high-pitched shreak from the woman which breaks the previous non-diagetic sounds. The shot here is handheld to show she was scared and to place us in the action.

When they begin to explore the cave system, the non-diagetic music is restored once again, long notes of a high pitch play over the woman descending into the cave. The lighting here is extremely low-key, the only light source being the torches on their hardhats. Quick cuts between handheld shots are used in conjunction with the amplified sound of the women breathing to build suspense once again.

Horror: American Film Review 2 - Resident Evil: Afterlife

Resident Evil: Afterlife, the fourth instalment in the Resident Evil film series (loosely based on the Capcom game of the same name), was released in 2010 and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Resident Evil: Afterlife opened in 2,904 theatres in the United States -2,203 being 3D-equipped - along with 141 IMAX openings. The film has grossed $60,128,566 in the United States and Canada, and $233,985,429 in international markets for a worldwide total of $296,221,566. In the United States, the high box office gross was attributed to the ticket price inflation of the 3D presentation, but the film had the lowest opening weekend attendance of the series. The film was also nominated for a multitude of different awards including “Favourite Horror Movie” at the People’s Choice Awards.

The film starts with the opening credits playing over an establishing shot of Tokyo; the titles are in a serif, silver/metallic font which increases in size and fades out. The camera zooms in every time a new title is overlaid, until we reach a bird’s eye view shot of a woman standing in the rain when everyone else has Umbrellas (direct reference to the “evil” corporation in the film - Umbrella Company). The song “Tokyo” playing over this opening sequence is recorded by “tomandandy”, who are known for their work as composers for film.

The camera then cuts to a close-up shot of the static woman’s feet as the music intensifies, and a focus pull is used once the camera reaches her face, so the audience focuses on her. The music slowly quietens as the woman slowly turns, and then breaks as she screams and lunges towards a passerby teeth-first. The camera cuts again to bird’s eye view to show the woman pinning the passerby down and gnawing at his flesh, and then quickly zooms out until the only things visible are the lights of major buildings. These lights fade out in large clusters, representing a quick ripple effect which occurred on a global scale.

During a scene later on, clever editing is used to show a wireframe diagram of the underground headquarters of Umbrella Corporation; the camera navigates throughout the wireframe until it reaches a set of stairs, at which point it transitions OUT of wireframe and back into actually footage.

During an extremely well choreographed fight scene involving Umbrella drones and an Alice clone, editing is again used to slow the clip down greatly and show the effect a bullet has on sound waves, evadible in the screenshot below.