The Uninvited Analysis- (First 5 minutes)

The Uninvited Analysis

The film that I am going to be analysing is ‘The Uninvited’, directed by Charles and Thomas Guard and was released on the 30^th of January 2009 and I am going to analyse the first 5 minutes. The genre of the film is psychological horror and was adapted from a Korean film called a Tale of two sisters.

This shot is an establishing long shot of teens aged around 16-18 having a party at night and establishes the location of which this scene is taking place for the audience. It has low key lighting but has some light coming from the fires in the shot.  There are many characters in the scene so implies that for now they are going to be safe as typically horror films portray that there is safety in numbers.

In the next shots, we see one of the characters walking away from the rest and wandering into the wood alone. The mid shot of her walking into the forest shows only her and she is positioned left of the frame exposing the lowly lit bushes and trees in front of her. This conveys her as being vulnerable as her body language looks very anxious and cowardly. This shot could also suggest that something is watching her because the camera tracks behind her as if something is following her so builds tension as it makes it seem as something is going to attack or grab her. The camera then switches to another mid shot from behind the trees and focuses on the girl which again gives the effect that someone or something is watching her from within the vegetation.

The girl then comes to an opening in the forest and an eye-line match it used to show what she sees, which is white garbage bags. These garbage bags are out of places as you do not normally see them in a forest so implies that something is wrong or out of place and may suggest that the character is hallucinating. The camera reverses back to her in a mid-shot and shows her confused reaction as she sees the garbage bags. 

This also allows the audience to see her clothing closer and her tense body language better. She is wearing a white and red floral top and blue jeans so implies that she is just a normal person and the camera continues to pan into her face.

The camera then goes to a long shot of both the garbage bags and the girl. Incidental non-diegetic music begins to play and heightens the uneasiness of the scene and implies that something may happen to the character. The scene is lowly lit and has desaturated colours which contrasts with the uneasy and anxious mood of the scene and builds the atmosphere of it.

The next shot is a high angle close-up of the girl opening one of the white garbage bags. The non-diegetic music builds up which creates tension and the camera pans in. A slower paced is used which drags out the scene so makes the audience wait in anticipation for her to open the bag. The high angle could signify the girl’s vulnerability in the scene and how prone she it to getting hurt.

As the girl opens the bag it moves and the music gets higher creating a jump scare. However, it was just the bag falling over and we see a reaction shot of the girls face and we can see her panicked and anxious expressions. We hear the diegetic thud of the bag as it falls over so suggests that there is something heavy in there such as a corpse. The camera then goes to a low level shot of the bag which shows a body like shape inside and creates an uncertain and tense feeling for the scene.

 It then cuts to a high angle mid shot of the bag and a body of a girl that has fallen out of it. We see bruises and dirt over her arm and leg which implies that she may have been murdered and left here or was lost and died because of it. This also shows that this film is horror as corpses of people are a typical convention of horror films so this explicitly shows that. The dead girl head then turns and whispers to the other girl “don’t go home”. This could be foreshadowing for later in the film and suggests that she may be in danger. The pace gets faster as the girl runs away from the dead body and the music begins to build creating tension and a distress.

Elliptical editing is used to show a small amount of time as passed as the girl has run away and as the girl is running away we see a long shot of a house at the edge of the woods and the character begins to narrate what she was hearing saying “I heard my mother’s bell”. This implies that something may of happened to her mother and this may be a flashback from her past explaining what happened.