Thinking outside the box: Foreign Expectations Of A Thriller!

Hansel and Gretal (2007)

After a stressful day, and spending the night in, I decided to watch a Korean Horror film Hansel and Gretal. The film is subverted from the original Brothers Grimm tale and similarly reminded me of Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber series.

The film starts off with Eun-Soo driving whilst
 talking to his pregnant girlfriend. A quarrel arises which leads him to crash and becomes unconscious. He suddenly wakes up to find himself in the deep dark forest to which he sees light from a lantern that a young girl is carrying. She introduces herself as Young-Hee as they head for her house where she and her family live. Their large house is in the middle of the forest called the "House of Happy Children". After entering the House, many cynical secrets are discovered and revealed  to Eun-Soo which he tries to run away from.

Watching the first two minutes of the movie showed traits of both a thriller and a horror film. The beginning is first set to introduce us to the deep dark forest which gives the sense of entrapment, being lost, a claustrophobic impression. The Soundtrack for the two minutes similarly remind me of The hand that rocked the cradle in the way that the music sounded childishly cynical.



At the start of the film, extreme close up shots were
used to show the toys the children would play with. however with the low key lighting accompanied by the cynical soundtrack, an element of unease is created within the audience.



The use of showing children's toys in a faded sort of effect look almost washable, as if it were only vivid memories. The shots look as though there are two shots of two different locations applied to on which confuses the viewers as we aren't what images should our eyes be concentrating on.


Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the twisted unexpected end to the movie. Even though this film is a horror, however i felt that the plot was creative in the sense that it was simple and unexpected at the same time.

I'm listening... Slender Man Sounds- Audio Research

As I do with my free time, I venture out into playing games and one which has recently caught my eye (or should i say ear!) is Slender Man. The successful horror game is where you are set in the dark forests with a torch and the aim is to go find these pages. however doing this you get the Slender San who occasionally appears in front of you, or to which you might run into. If you stare at the Slender Man or you hover around the are he is in or too long it is game over for you. Whilst playing this game I was influenced by the backing track of this. The emphasis of the footsteps and the crunch of the leaves made me feel cautious of where i was moving my avatar. With this sounds of the wind, birds tweeting were also accompanied to make the experience seem more realistic. The static electric guitar sound give it an edge to the audience as the obscured sound rounds off the game when you die in the hands of Slender Man. Even though this isn't a film and is only a game, I think that the influence in anoher media concept could be applied to our coursework. Both the game and out film have similar motives in which they are able to start to scare or in fact literally scare the audience. What we want for our audience is to be able to experiance the thrill and the rush of adrenaline to which i think the soundtrack of Slender Man does extremely well whilst also playing the game.