The first thing I noticed about this trailer straight away was the chilling music, this music sets the tone for the trailer. The zoom to the image of the phone evidently informs the audience this phone is important. We are then shown brief flashes of a screaming girl in black and white – I don’t think this surrealism works as you don’t quite catch the full image when you are watching the trailer, this happens twice. The second flash is more effective as you can make out the shadowy figure of a man. This creates a ambiguity which intends to frightens the audience. The phone starts to ring which then starts the tension, a naïve girl answers the phone and asks “Is anyone there” all we can hear are the breaths at the receiving end. This is a typical technique used in horror trailers to create suspense. I found it almost comical as it is such a typical way of scaring people. We are then given some dialogue which literally informs the audience that this girl is going to be all alone in the forest. Letting us know she is vulnerable and out of helps reach. A house is then shown, a big scary house by a lake… I think this trailer so far is extremely uncharismatic and has no attention grabbing aspects. There is then a gap filled with twilight noises, and more images of the empty rooms in the house. I think this was supposed to create tension for the audience. IT seems quite unrealistic at this point as she is sat with no television on in the living room. The phone then rings again and a ‘menacing’ voice asks “have you checked the children” now this would scare parents as it would be there worst nightmare for there children to be abducted and it would definitely make us teens feel uneasy as it our job to keep children safe when babysitting. I think this makes the trailer appealing as it scares different ages. After checking the children and seeing there safe this allows the audience to breath and feel a bit at ease – I think this is a good technique to set the audience up for something scary. But the shaking of the door is not a ‘jump out of my skin’ moment it was actually quite anti climatic.
There is then the continuing ringing sound with a heavy bass – this slowly builds in volume and the flash’s of images increase in speed , this is intended to build tension - but what doesn’t make this very scary is the actresses plead for the caller to stop ringing, she doesn’t sound that scared. This will transfer to the audience and not make us less scared.
When the police ring and inform that the call is from inside the house, this is the point where the trailer starts for me. The lights turn off which means darkness had flooded the house, horrifying screams are being played as the children are missing, but the girls reaction isn’t that scared, we see the figure of a normal man, we don’t see his face which leaves it ambiguous for the audience. There is then a moments pause when the girl is in some water – I think this was used to frighten the audience… It didn’t scare me as there was just no real emotion portrayed. It’s the screams that had been edited over the top which added fear to the trailer. Then the phone beeping and flashes of images this created a manic sentiment which worked well with the trailer, in these flashes of images we see that the children are safe – I think that this spoils the trailer as the audience now know that they end up alright! I want to make sure this does not happen in my trailer!
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