Evaluation Task 2 - How have i represented Social Groups in my thriller?

Jake Gyllenhaal in Donnie Darko is similar to our main character as we wanted to focus on someone that is vulnerable and innocent but at the same time complex character. In Donnie darko, the main character is represented as being mentally unstable as he seems to hallucinate but actually he is just seeing glimpses of the future. in our film, we wanted the audience to believe that our character was also unstable as he felt there were people inside his house but nobody else could see them. In our opening sequence through the shot in the kitchen, we can clearly see that the clown is there yet other people in the house cant. This is much like Donnie darko where he talks to a giant rabbit that converses with him but nobody else can see it therefore they think he is insane. 

  

In our opening sequence, the victim was followed using a tracking shot as well as an eye line match to show fear of the victim. Furthermore, the non diegetic sinister sound throughout builds tension. in our thriller, we have subverted gender stereotypes by having a male victim in the opening sequence rather than a woman. Usually this sort of film typically has a first girl victim who dies at the beginning that is a female. The close up shot of the victim shows his facial expressions and has connotations of fear. The white bed sheets symbolise the innocence of the male victim as well as the diegetic sound sound when he wakes up, to show that he was relaxed and calm before misery was brought upon him. His innocence is enhanced when we see him grabbing the hammer immediately for protection, showing his lack of strength and confidence in his own ability, unlike a stereotypical male in a thriller. Furthermore, his stereotypical behaviour of being too scared to look into other rooms when going downstairs to investigate is shown through the tracking and over the shoulder shots demonstrating his naivety. Overall, we used age stereotypical in our opening sequence however by using a young male instead of a young female, we subverted generic expectations as we didn't feature a first girl but rather a first boy to die in our film.

In our opening sequence, we use binary opposition effectively by clearly highlighting who the bad and good people are as soon as we begin. We start by targeting a lonely and isolated boy in a bedroom and make him vulnerable instantly by hearing a frightening noise that forces him to go and investigate. In this case, the boy is the victim and the person causing all the fear is the antagonist. Furthermore, the use of strengths and weaknesses is used by targeting the weaknesses of the victim and making it obvious that he is vulnerable at each stage of the sequence. Although it seems like the victim is calm and combative, the subtle gestures hint that he is weak e.g. his facial expression when he wakes up. The emotions of the victim are in the hands of the antagonist as throughout the sequence, he has the ability to change his emotions and this has allowed him (antagonist) to have complete power. The contrast is also evident because of the mental state of the protagonists. The antagonist is clearly a psychopath if he breaks in to someones house in the middle of the night with the attention to frighten and also with the objective of killing them. The victim is at a disadvantage because he isn't aware of the capabilities that the antagonist will go to in order to achieve his goal.


We chose to represent our male character as an innocent and naive young man alone in the house and vulnerable. In this respect we wanted to make the film like the Enfield Haunting and The Amityville Horror. Both these films focus on young people being haunted as it makes the representation appear more realistic.  The focus on the close-up of the male character enabled us to make him appear vulnerable and the over the shoulder tracking shots enabled the audience to feel his tension and how scared he was home alone. This was a choice we made early on as we felt this would best add to the tension of the sequence and make our character a male version of Drew Barrymore in Scream.