2. Opening credits
The film starts off with the
‘Universal’ logo being
presented in the usual way it is
in most film.The music starts
to get eerie as the next
company ‘Blinding edge
pictures’ and ‘Blumhouse
productions’ logos are shown.
Blinding edge pictures is
known for producing mainly
horror/thriller films and
Blumhouse productions is
popular also for its horror films.
Showing these popular
companies sets an expectation
for the films quality.
3. First scene
In the first scene we see a young girl sitting at the end of a table and at the
other end we see a group of girls very happy while she’s dozed off.The music
starts quite mysterious but morphs into cheerful restaurant music as the
background chatter becomes louder. As the scene progresses we hear a
father and daughter talk about how the girl is strange and ‘gets detentions a
lot’ it almost makes the audience seem that she might be the antagonist
because of her weird nature or she’s just a quirky protagonist.
4. First scene
As the three girls are in the car the ‘strange’ one sits at the front while
the other two sit at the back distracted by their phones, the girl at the
front hears a thud and looks through the rear view mirror and sees
nothing but it already sparks some mystery on the audience. As
someone slips into the car the girl glances at the rear view mirror again
but this time she sees food in the floor that the dad was loading into the
trunk, and she slowly turns her head in confusion to the drivers seat.The
diegetic music playing juxtaposes to the situation as it’s a cheerful song
but the three girls are in a predicament. As the strange man in the car is
tidying it up the camera shots are hand held as they are very shaky and
they represent how scared and confused the girls are.
As he goes to spray the two girls in the back the camera shot slightly
slows down along with the music which could represent the girls heart
skipping a beat and her seeing everything in a blur.We can occasionally
hear her deep breaths as she contemplates what to do. Heavy breathing
is exaggerated often in horror films to connote the characters anxiety.
5. First scene
As she reaches to open the car door she does this very slowly and
it builds up anxiety in both the characters and in the audiences as
we hope she can make it out.The diegetic cheerful music starts to
slow down and decrease in volume while there’s a hint of non-
diegetic eerie music.This all abruptly stops when she unlatches
the door but the safety bells goes off and he stares at her, we hear
her shaky breath and the camera also shakes slightly as it’s a POV
shot from her POV.
As he lunges towards her in a fast manner the camera cuts off and
it displays more credits.
This is a sort of cliff-
hanger moment as it
builds up anticipation in
the audience but they
don’t see the outcome
straight away.
6. Following credits
The following credits are
shown like this to represent
how many personalities the
protagonist, Kevin has.
The music is very loud and low
pitched. It creates an
unsettling atmosphere.
In between the credits it shows
snippets of the film, there are
extremely short clips that
create an enigma code.The
clips shown are currently
unknown to the audience so it
creates more mystery.
We see a short clip of one of the girls being
dragged down the hallway looking slightly
dazed and confused and we also see another
one of the girls being laid across a bed.This
correlates to the previous scene as they were all
drugged and clearly being taken elsewhere but
the question is where and by whom.
This also confirms that this
film has a non-linear narrative.
7. Ending
Near the end we hear a news reporter talking about
Kevin and how he is being referred to as ‘the horde’
due to his many personalities.
The film also pays homage to a previous film by
Shyamalan, ‘Mr Glass’ which is the nickname of
Samuel L. Jacksons character in ‘Unbreakable’.
We also hear the composer James Newton Howards
dark, lush score to ‘Unbreakable’ playing the last
scene involving Kevin.
The end credits are similar to the opening credits as
we see the clever portrayal of names in 24 different
split screens to represent Kevin’s multiple
personalities.
