Genre Analysis "May"

At the very beginning of the titles sequence it fades into what looks like blood soaked denim, this suggests straight away that the genre of the film may be a horror. Red is always linked to horror films because it connotes blood, and blood connotes death.

When the titles are coming up it doesn’t scream horror film, It looks as though it might be a nice indie film about dress making maybe. It’s odd and quirky, because the shapes that are made/cut out don’t have straight lines, are not perfect and it all seems nice and home made on a sweing machine. This is a classic convention for a horror film, because it shocks to audience when they see the next part of the sequence. The film makers, try to make it look all normal, and then throw the viewer straight into horror, it creates fear and works really well for a horror film.

After some sewing machine work happens to the background the title of the film comes up, and a spot of blood dips onto it. This will tell the audience that the fim is likely to be a horror film. After the title of the film has been shown the whole screen fades to black. This sets the scene back is a really common coloured used to represent death, its threatening because it takes up the whole screen. Five seconds after the fade to black it suddenly shows a girl covering one of her eyes with blood everywhere whilst screaming. Imediatly this creates enigma codes; who is she? whats happened to her? But not only are there enigma codes, it also makes the viewer jump slightly because it went from a black screen to a screaming girl which definatly proves that this film is a horror film.

The non diegetic music is quite high pitched and soft, if you listen to it you can also hear whispering which makes the atmosphere of the film more intense because ghost children can be asociated with some horror films, because they are creepy and frightning. The images of the dolls parts falling also adds to the sense of creepyness because they are only body parts, and not whole dolls, the non diegetic sounds along with the body parts of dolls adds to the atmosphere of a horror film very well.

The doll that the girl gets for her birthday really sets the genre, It adds a freaky touch to the film becasuse it is always staring through the glass box that it sits in all day, and dolls can often be used in horror films because they seem inncocent, another example of a doll in a horror film is Chuckie.

The mother acts like verything has to be perfect, and she can be seen as a “freak” for this. Because she wants everything to be perfect she is making her daughter isolated. Being isolated in a horror film, adds a sense of tention, because you know they are alone and vulnerable. This makes the film scary, because something will happen to that character.