This document summarizes and provides video links to scenes from various horror movies. It examines how different films use techniques like editing, music, and camerawork to unsettle and frighten audiences. Examples discussed include the transforming grin of a man in A Field in England, a disturbing mother-son scene in Insidious 2, and unexpected attacks in Night of the Living Dead and The Conjuring. Analysis also covers classics like Psycho, Nosferatu, The Exorcist, and The Shining. The document concludes by comparing unsettling opening scenes and hallucinatory sequences in The Babadook and A Field in England respectively.

1. Horror
This presentation shows a variety of clips and scenes from horror
movies. This collection of clips will help me realise the different ways of
making a horror film, and how to use mise-en-scene and other
attributes to unnerve audiences.

2. A Field in England (2013)
Not necessarily a popular or obvious
choice of a horror film, A Field in England
tells the story of a group of deserters in
the Civil War who are captured by an
alchemist and are forced to help him find
his long lost treasure. In this scene,
Whitehead is heard screaming (which in
itself is truly unnerving due to the reason
of his screaming never being revealed
but is left to the opinion of the audience
to decide) and then walking out of the
tent with rope around him tied to
something in the tent. His pace into the
field has been slowed down for
maximum effect, to unsettle the
audience and for them to see
Whitehead’s grin, which shows he is a
different man from when he entered the
tent. This shows that whatever nameless
brutality what Whitehead undergoes in
the tent has drastically transformed him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzLnRXtHO0M

3. Insidious 2
(2013)
In this scene in Insidious 2, a mother
is shouting and attacking her young
son Parker about his wanting to be
boy, despite his mother wanting him
to be a young girl called Marilyn. This
act of brutality on the boy is
disturbing, only to be amplified by the
mother forcing him to admit that his
name is Marilyn when he obviously
doesn’t believe it. Whilst the boy
looks natural and healthy, the mother
has pale skin and shadows under her
eyes, which suggests that she in
abnormal. At the end of the scene,
the mother stops taking to her son
mid-sentence, and slowly turns to see
the people watching her. The
background turns dark and the
mother screams and point at the
people, who are impossibly thrown
back through the door, and her eyes
bulge and her mouth is wide open.
This image is alarming and distressing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b6biW_qicQ

4. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Despite its out of date effects and fight
sequences which look little more than
toddlers fighting, Night of the Living Dead is
the classic zombie film which started it all. In
this scene Johnny and Barbara are laying
flowers on a grave, and go to exit the
graveyard until Johnny starts to mess around
and frighten Barbara. He starts to tell her that
‘They’re coming to get you’, which when
applied to a realistic world would be quite
frightening. Whilst passing a man in the
graveyard, the man attacks Barbara who has
to be saved by Johnny. In the end, Johnny
collapses from his fight with the zombie. This
scene is startling for the audience because
Johnny includes the man in his taunts saying
that ‘there comes one of them now’ for
Barbara, and the man is genuinely coming to
attack the two.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6EMALvJQVc

5. Psycho (1960)
A classic horror made by the horror genius
Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho tells the story a man
Norman Bates who owns a motel under the
thumb of his mother. As it turns out his
mother is a skeleton and he walks around in
her clothes, becoming her. In the end he is
arrested for a murder, and the film ends with
a monologue from Norman as his mother
which in itself is discomforting to think that he
believes that he is his mother and he can get
away with it. This monologue is the thought
process that Norman/Mother goes through,
and at the end he looks directly into the
camera whilst thinking the words ‘She
wouldn’t hurt a fly’. Looking at the camera
whilst filming is unorthodox, however under
the circumstances Norman has direct eye
contact with the audience, and along with his
creepy smile suggests that he plans on getting
released from prison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYDxxHrlmUg

6. Nosferatu (1922)
Nosferatu is one of the first unauthorised
adaptation of Dracula, filmed in 1921. In
this clip Hutter’s wife Ellen is sacrificing
herself to Count Orlok (the nosferatu, which
in this film means vampire), who comes to
steal her ‘pure heart’. She has opened the
windows to let him in, but he surprises
everyone by coming in through the door.
What makes this scene even more terrifying
is that you never see Count Orlok, only ever
his shadow, but you know he is in the room
from the look of Ellen’s face. Despite Ellen’s
useless attempt to protect her heart, the
sudden realisation that the Count takes her
heart without even touching her startles the
audience. The Count’s shadow is in the
stereotypical stance of a vampire, one hand
in front of him with the other hand by his
side. The music in this scene is jolty and
menacing which puts the audience on edge
and creates tension for what is about to
happen in the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k51eCnC8ucw

7. The Conjuring (2013)
The Conjuring is another typical supernatural
horror film. The first clip shows the game that a
mother and daughter play together, where one is
blindfolded whilst trying to seek the other, during
which the one who is hiding must clap three times.
The mother thinks that her daughter is in the
wardrobe, and the audience is certain because they
see hands in the wardrobe clapping. However,
when the mother takes of her blindfold her
daughter runs into the room from the hallway. I
then dawns on the mother, and audience, that the
thing clapping in the wardrobe wasn’t the girl. In
the next clip, the mother is scared of what she will
find in the basement. She lights a match to see
better, and whilst she is looing down, the audience
is expecting something or someone to jump at her
from the basement. However, when the camera is
on her face, hands appear next to her head from
the background and clap. This shocks and frightens
the audience because it shows that something has
been following the mother because they know her
game she plays with her daughter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoDWoxXxQaA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PdAnO4bZq4

8. The Exorcist (1973)
This clip from this revolutionary film The
Exorcist shows a priest attempting to exile a
demonic force that is possessing a child. The
priest shouts at the demon to be cast out, but
the child is hysterically laughing, which is
unnerving to hear because of the anger of the
priest, a character of noble intentions and
respect, is being laughed at by someone
subservient to him and is working to reduce
him. The child turns away from the priest, but
when it turns back makes eye contact with
camera and the audience, only for a brief
second but still enough to scare anyone
watching the film. The child also blasphemies
against the church and God which is deemed
sacrilegious. Lastly, the child head begins to
twist all the way around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSxuXQCEC7M

9. The Shining (1980)
What was once a loving relationship has
turned into a violent mess in this turning
point scene in The Shining, which shows
Jack screaming and threatening his
hysterical wife. Jack also raises his hands in
a non violent way, but has violent
implications, meaning his hands were not
near Wendy so she was not in danger of
him attacking her, but the fact that he raises
his hands in the first place is abnormal and
disturbing, and along with his verbal
confirmation a him hurting her, scares
Wendy into defending herself. His joking
manner soon changes when he tells her to
put down the bat, and continues to tell her
in a serious manner to give him the bat. The
severe change in tone of voice implicates
that Jack is at the end of his patience, and
the audience worries for Wendy because of
her lack of confidence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n47U-v3v1-Q

10. The Babadook (2014) vs A Field in England (2013)
These two clips are from films which involve a large amount of editing to emphasises topics. The first is from The Babadook,
whose opening scene has a woman who is in the drivers seat of a crashing car. The film keeps fading black, and then cutting
back to the woman. This creates an intense mood of what is going to happen in the film, because this scene is without
context. The woman is then impossibly lowered onto her bed at her house which only adds to the confusion fro the audience.
The second clip is from A Field in England where Whitehead is tripping on mushrooms that he has found in the field. The
sequence that follows Whitehead’s speech is presumed the effect of what Whitehead is feeling, with images of O’Neill and
other characters and important symbols within the film (ie mushrooms) being intertwined with other pieces of footage and
being mirrored. The ending sequence being Whitehead disintegrating into nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wpS9otWz9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3YWhARpEUA