Crimson Peak Analysis

Crimson Peak Analysis

At first we have a shot pulling out from the main character, she seems to be groaning ad holding her stomach. During this shot we can hear the dietetic sound of the dog barking at something. The shot cuts to her turning around to the other side of the bed and saying “dog?” She places her hand where the dog would be and it isn’t there. The dog continues to bark and she gets up to investigate the noise. The blue tint of the screen tells the audience that it is cold and gloomy, since this is what we represent the colour blue with. She then gets up and we get a medium distance shot from her feet up towards her face. The camera hasn’t tilted it has stayed stationary but moved up. We can clearly see the dog running into the frame going towards her but her face shows that she has something else on her mind and that the dog is no longer the main focus of attention. She then walks forward to a door which creaks open. This is one of the conventions of a horror movie. We get a low angle shot showing that the dog runs through the door out of our sight. We get a tracking shot of her walking down the corridor towards the creaking door. Throughout this entire scene the lighting is low key. As she enters the room the camera pans up to her level and we see her back as we follow her. The camera tracks right as she looks over a balcony. There seems to be leaves falling through the ceiling. This shows that there is a hole in the roof and maybe that there is no roof. This backs up my point that the colour blue is used to show that it is cold. This is mise-en-scene and the significance of the setting that she is in. She says “Thomas?” over the balcony and gets no response. She then looks right and the camera tracks her, keeping the same distance as before. She turns a corner and hears a door shut and her dog squeak. We get a shot of a narrow hallway with green wall paper. Green is a colour that is represented as someone being ill. This could be why she is hearing all of these sounds maybe she is ill? This could reinforce the fact that she is ill and all of the things that are happening are illusions. As she walks toward the door that was slammed shut she can hear scratching on the other side as if it was her dog. The camera then slowly zooms in on her hand as she goes to grab the door knob. As she turns it the camera zooms in closer at what is inside the door keeping its original position. As she opens the door the frame shot changes to her close up of her face and we hear the dog barking next to her at the start of the hallway. We then cut to the dog on the floor barking at her. The next shot is a reaction shot from a close up to a medium shot of the girl. Her reaction is shocked and scared we can tell this because of her facial expression. Then we get a zombie that we can see that slams the door shut in front of her. We then get a crescendo in the music and it becomes thinker. This music is non-dietetic because the actors can not hear it the music slowly gets louder to the point where she opens the door and the music stops. We then get a shot of inside the cabinet and there is nothing in genre apart from some shelves and some jars. The camera is placed on on the shelf to show that what is on the self has some importance to the scene. We then get a over the shoulder shot of her grabbing a jar from the shelf. She grabs out wax cylinders, these would be used further in the plot to develop the story. We then get a long shot of the hall she is in from the dog's perspective with the camera slowly tracking in while she shuts the cabinet shut. We then get a close up of her face as she shuts the cabinet door, the camera then pans left and focuses on the floor, a zombie then pulls itself out of the floor while screaming and crawling. Once the zombie has come out of the floor we then get a tracking shot of the zombie crawling toward the girl. The shot is a over the shoulder shot of the zombie crawling towards the girl. The zombie is crawling towards the girl yet she still sprints away from it like it’s going to catch up to her. This backs up my point that the girl is ill or potentially dreaming, in dreams everything is over exaggerated so this could be why she is sprinting away from it. Another reason why she might be dreaming or hallucinating is because the zombie looks to be see through and ghost like. This could be the director saying to the audience that it’s all a dream. The green wall paper also backs up my point. We then cut to a shot of the dog squealing and running away. The shot is on a low angle looking up so that we can see the girl run away too. We then cut to a tracking shot of her and the dog getting into the elevator, this then shuts by itself and sends them down to the bottom floor of the house. We get still shots from other floors watching them going down past the camera. There are also shots from inside the elevator so that we know what it feels like to be in their situation. The camera is pulling back at the bottom of the room when the lift reaches the bottom, this shows the size of the room, this is called a establishing shot. (to show where the scene will be taking place) The gate then opens up and we get a low angle shot of the dog running towards the camera. We then get a close up to the girl as she pulls a lever down to turn on some power. We then get a shot from the opposite angle (where the switch is) of the lights coming on. We then cut to a close up of a large container with the initials ‘E.S.’ She rubs her hand on it after we know what it says. We then get a medium shot of her kneeling down to look at the container. We no know how big the container is compared to her. She places down the candles so she can see the padlock. We then get a shot reverse shot of her looking at the padlock. We then get a close up of the padlock and it says ‘Enola’ enola backwards is alone backwards. This will help toward the plot later on in the story. We get a reaction shot of her saying it, she looks confused and as if she has heard of it before.