Genre research - Carrie (2013)

Carrie (2013)

Carrie (2013) is the third remake of the classic horror released in 1976. The story line is highly popular in the horror genre, this is shown in the fact that the same film has been remade a three times, and the latest remake still had a total gross of over $30,000,000 in its first month of release, being the 18^th of October, 2013.

The main narrative of the opening scene shows us a character on a bed, giving birth. The character spends the first minute of the opening giving birth, only to attempt to murder the newborn immediately after the birth has taken place. However the mum gets a matter of inches away from the face of the newborn before stopping herself. From this opening, we can see that the ‘evil’ in the opening is either the woman or the new born, as either the woman has a metal issue or is being possessed of some kind, or the new born is some evil spirit/demon that the woman is going to rid, but cant have the heart to do that to her new born. This right away establishes the story line of evil in one of the characters, and the main characters are presented right in the opening.

The first notable convention of horrors we see in the opening scene of Carrie will be the use of sound. The sounds we hear are screams of pain, which is diegetic from the woman who is laid on the bed. This is setting an unsettling atmosphere for the rest of the film, and sets the tone for what the viewers can expect for the duration of the film. The sound in the opening is somewhat simplistic with only two types of sound being heard, the screams from the woman on the bed, and the ambient sounds while and after she has given birth. This is a mix of both diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. This is a fast contrast, which is also notable for my opening as one second the character is screaming at her loudest, and immediately she stops and the ambient sound comes in.

Another notable element seen in this opening would be the fast transition from the various shots. This meaning that the first shot we can see is a close up areal shot moving along the bed to the character, then the shot quickly changes to a mid shot from the side, before returning to an areal shot. This same sequence is repeated a number of times in the first minute, all from different angles around the woman, ranging in distance from close up to long shot. This creates a frantic mood to the opening, where the audience can begin feeling tension, as the scene gets more and more manic as they don’t know what to expect to happen.

Also, the initial representation of the character is important. In this case, the character was laid on a bed, surrounded by blood while screaming and crying. This instantly removes all ‘glamour’ from the character, representing the genre as not being a happy lighthearted genre, but a more dark and sinister movie. Also the lack of dialogue leaves the audience in mystery, as the only thing hard in the opening can be the screaming of the character. Screaming is another commonly used code and convention of horror films.

The general mise en scene of the room represented a traumatic experience as there was a lack of help being seen in the clip, and there was a lot of blood that was presented around the room. The room was also well lit but the camera was in low-key lighting, following through with the mise on scene or darkness and trauma.

At the very end of the opening, were presented with iconography of the title of the film. The title is in a blood red colour, on top of a black background. These are common colours that can be seen in the horror genre with the black representing that of darkness, and the red giving the impression of blood. The blood was represented in the title as the letters began to drip as if they were representing a person who was being killed.