Horror Essay

Horror films all use similar features to convey fear into the viewer, such as using high pitched and fast paced music, or using different types of lighting to create mystery, and especially using camera angles and different types of shots to confuse the audience.

In the Paranormal Activity films the lighting is mainly low key throughout, just to give the audience a sense of fear that something dangerous is lurking in the house and is hiding in the shadows. As well as this the directors use a lot of wide and high angle shots, this is probably so that the audience has to look at a lot of things in the frame at the same time so if something was to move around it would catch the viewer off guard and make them question what just moved in the frame, creating mystery and confusion for the viewer, also used are jump scares throughout and frighten the audience suddenly. In the films you get to witness the protagonists during the daytime which is always set in high key lighting to make you feel safe since it is daytime, this relates to the usual horror stereotype that if the sun is up then the evil will disappear, during this time a lot of close ups are used too to show what the characters are feeling and experiencing while they are victims of the horrors.

In one clip of the film you get to see a dog sleeping in the same room as a baby and you get to see this from the viewpoint of a surveillance camera, the footage in dark by using low key lighting and then the dog begins to bark wildly and dominantly. This scene is to probably show that the dog is protecting the child from evil as we know that there is evil present in the house, and when the dog begins to bark we can tell that the evil spirit is probably nearby and might hurt the baby so the dog is trying scare the spirit off. The fact that the camera is positioned in the baby's room probably means that the evil spirit want to harm the baby, or that the baby may even be important to the spirit as if it has a motive. We also know from this scene that the dog may be able to see the evil spirit and might be used later on to get rid of or even defeat the spirit. The high angle of the camera in the scene shows that the baby and the dog are inferior to spirit and that they are helpless against it no matter what they try to do, and because we are unable to see the spirit there are no camera angles to show the power it has and so we as the audience have to assume that the spirit has unlimited power which cannot be shown. The camera has a slight static effect in the scene, which conveys mystery since you cannot get a perfect picture of what is going on.