Sinister Trailer Analysis

The film of the trailer that I am looking at is called Sinister, it was released in 2012 and is a supernatural horror film directed by Scott Derrickson and was written by Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill. The trailer starts of slightly unconventional to normal trailers, as it starts at a dark scene, with fast transitions between shots and a voice over which we presume it is from a news program. The voice over says “New Details today in the gruesome murders of a family found earlier this week.” During these vocals on screen we see a dark shot of a house – which we later see in the light – and some circled photographs of the family and a drawn picture of them, names underneath. This lets the audience know that something bad has already happened and leads them to believe that the person that plotted their death is still out there, leaving the audience with a feeling of uncertainty and insecurity. After a blacked out screen appears with the text ‘9 months later’ on it the trailer then begins to follow the conventional scheme of a Horror Trailer. It starts with soft scenes and establishing shots that introduce us to the main characters in the film and where it is that the film is set. Which we can see is a small community and the house is one story with an attic – which connotes a place where hidden terrors and secrets of the past could be kept. We get in total about 15 seconds of slow, soft, daylight scenes in which we see the family in their new home and hear in the voiceover them talking to each other having normal conversations. In the vocals here we hear the lead male say that the family had to move house because his ‘new story was here’, this makes the audience relate the idea of the deaths of the first family we are introduced too the lead males new story. We then get to a scene where the lead male and his wife are going to bed, which then leads us into a series of darker shots. The first dark shot is of the lead male going into the attic – once again connoting the idea of hidden secrets and fear – the man comes across a box filled with old film and a projector. Before he investigates this we get a screen come up with the text ‘From the makers of Paranormal Activity and Insidious’ on, this is a unique selling point as this were both very popular and well known films. He begins to play one of the tapes in the box and then we hear him say to himself ‘That’s the family that lived here’ – meaning the family that lived there before them. There are a lot of cuts from the lead males face and the images being projected onto the wall until there is a loud ambient screech and it quickly cuts from the image on the wall of the families death (being hung) and the lead male jumping in shock and fear. He then turns off the projector and it cuts to black, then when it comes back in the lead male is in a police station talking to a police officer about what he has found. This then leads to an investigation of what has happened and what all of this means by the lead male, until he finds out exactly what is causing it all and sees it within the films footage. Another screen comes up with the text ‘Once you see him’ on it while we are hearing the lead male talk to who we presume is some kind of psychologist who specialises in paranormal activity and introduces us to the killer ‘Bagoul’. We then get loud thuds and another screen coming up to say ‘Nothing can save you’. The scenes that we see after this all are in quite quick transitions that are getting faster as the trailer progresses and more events continue to happen. These events – although only seeing second snips of them – all have very jumpy and suspense building sounds and pictures in them, they are also all now shot in dark and eerie environments. We hear the lead male say to his wife as an voice over on the clips happening ‘Get the kids, pack the car, we have to leave here now.’ We then fade to a screen that looks like dissolving film and see the projector, still rolling but clicking as the film has finished. In these first 3 clicks the screen flashes black, then after every click has a tense, scary, 1 second piece of film footage to go with it. The clicking sound gets louder as these clips progress until it is a loud thud. It then gets to the point where we see a group of children sat on the floor in front of a screen that has a projected image on it, we instantly presume that these children are from the families that ‘Bagoul’ murdered. It then cuts to the lead males’ face that’s is looking at them looking distressed and scared, then when we cut back to the children and projector screen we see ‘Bagoul’ on the projection and the he jumps out from the left side of the camera into the actual scene, creating a very jumpy moment for the audience, this part is very conventional for a horror film trailer, to end with a bit that will make the audience remember it the most. With the loud noise that accompanies his appearance we then fade to a screen with the title of the film on. This is the first time we are actually told the title of the film (at the end of the trailer) this is for two reasons, the main one being is that the title will now stick in their head, as if it was shown at the start of the trailer the audience probably would have forgotten the title by the end. The other reason is that the audience then have to watch the entire trailer to then find out what it is they’re actually seeing clips from. We then get a dark image that looks like a blacked out figure quickly pop up onto the screen and then we see a website and other information for the film like social networking sites to involve a wide audience. We then see film dissolve, which relates back to the whole idea behind the movie itself and then the screen goes to black. This film follows the pattern of Levi-Stauss’ idea of binary opposites, for example in this film good vs evil. From the trailer we can already tell that some of the characters in this film are very conventional to what we expect to see within a horror film. There is a lot of use of children being the ‘possessed killer’ in this film, children are often used within horror films as the combination of their innocence and ability to kill is terrifying to the audience. Also as adults are so used to being in control and having power over their children the idea of children being able to have a hold over them and control or even kill them is really quite unnerving. From the trailer of this film we can also see that there is a person of authority – a police officer – who has no real power over the situation, a character type that is also often seen in these films.