LB - Analysis of Horror Film Opening - Ghost Ship (Beck, 2002)

The opening is set in the ballroom of a large ship. Everyone is dressed well and upper class.We are positioned with a young girl, who is the only person of her age at the party, and she sits solitary in the corner. A lady sings on stage dressed in a red dress, her voice is peaceful a peaceful atmosphere. Other than this, the sea is calm and so is the weather, again making us feel relaxed, however there are dark clouds in the distance, symbolising dark and troublesome times ahead. The typography used for the titles is also not what would be expected from a horror. It is scriptive and almost decorative in light pink, giving the impression of a romance genre. The young seems almost oblivious to the adults in the room, this could be connected to the ideology that children are not at the same importance as adults. Then a older man offers the the young girl a dance and her facial expressions change and shes smiling. Suddenly someone pulls a lever, which is a common use of prop in horror films, to signify that something bad is being unleashed. Suddenly a wire cuts through everyone in the crowd, leaving only the young girl alive. There is a great bit where the camera pans and you can see everyone standing in silence, just before their bodies halve and collapse. The sound of the wire cutting through everyone is very loud and cuts through the other sounds of the scene, almost like a oral metaphor. Then there is medium close up of the older man who was dancing with young girl, and along with profilmic effects we can see his head cut in two. The room is dark and silence to intense the drama. The opening scene finally ends in the young girl's scream, which is a iconic horror sound.