Tuesday, 1 January 2013

Research - Watch a Thriller film and list all the conventions

The thiller that I had watched over the holidays was Orphan. It is about a family who decide to adopt a girl called Esther after their baby had died. Esther is actually an older woman who appears to be a child and has escaped a mental asylum. It appears that she kills anybody who gets in her way or tried to reveal her secret, she jumps from family to family trying to seduce the husband and when that doesn't work she kills the whole family and makes it look like it was an accidental fire. She does this with her new family and ends up killing the father but the mother, daughter and son make it out alive. The mother breaks her neck and she dies.

The thriller conventions I found in this film were:

  • Warner Brothers logo at the start of film. 
  • A discrete title sequence
  • There is stylized editing, white around the frame to make it look like a dream/nightmare.
  • There is usually somebody introduced to a family and joins the family, similar to the stepfather
  • Children are suspicious of the new family member and know there is something wrong with her.
  • Person looks at a mirror and see's somebody directly behind them but it's usually a red herring.
  • Something is mentally wrong with the antagonist.
  • Music is always eerie, includes violins, builds the tension. 
  • Motif for when character arrives 
  • Antagonist continuously lies
  • Somebody always knows there is something wrong with the antagonist but nobody believes their suspicions until the end.
  • Antagonist always kills someone who is close to revealing their secret. 

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