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Blog Entry 4

The film I will touch on for Blog Entry 4 is “Ouija: Origin of Evil” directed by Mike Flanagan. This film can be a part of the supernatural/paranormal activity subgenre because it explores haunting scenes that are possessive. Alice gets help from Father Tom which is a priest that knows she in danger and questions her methods. They were seeking to uncover a dark secret of a spirit and find a way to save Doris and family from malevolent spirit. Thesis of this film is that it explores psychological impacts, grief, and loss within this family when attempting to communicate with spirits.

            This film explores themes of family being loss and consequence for their action with the supernatural. This film examines paranormal activity, and supernatural horror, crating tension and scares with eerie visuals, storytelling, and suspenseful sequences. Paulina and Doris were the daughter of Alice and she ran into a problem when attempting to communicate with spirits. This family acquires a new Ouija board, where they didn’t know they were inviting evil spirits into their homes.

            This film does a terrific job with costume choices and cinematography. Throughout the film there are dark secret surrounding the spirit that began haunting them but Mike does a great job building tension and suspense through the film.

            After reading the article “Game horror as a reflection of America” something stood out to me. What stood out to me was that, “They will choose to play the game, thus putting them in the power of a supernatural or human being who could roughly be equated to the gamemaster – this figure governs the game, and punishes those who break the rules.” This shows how films like Ouija can be a film of games and when they play these games it can create atmospheres of spirits that haunt them.

            Some reviews I seen about the film Ouija: Origin of Evil that it is a great eerie period piece of horror film because it is very well paced, quite a few scares, and very little graphic violence. Another review I seen from this film is that someone rated 6 out of 10 because they feel that an Oujia board can not improve someone life. They feel like its even worse that when the Ouija board was used the spirts end up haunting Doris and not the mother.

[jermainec]

After watching a interview of Oren Peli, he mentions a lot of significant thing while making his films. One thing I notice while watching this interview was that everyone makes horror film and it hard for directors to find place to film their horror films. Oren mentions that he was able to share his film with everyone like vice presidents and head of studios and was rejected by all of them. He also mention the one of the trickiest things were later post-production when going through all the footage and discovering the movie because there were time they had to reshoot scenes. When going though the film post production he realize there always room for improvements. He also mentions how utilizing crew limitation and financials limitation to your full advantage helps a lot. He notes his film “Paranormal Activity” had no money, no experience, or no lighting and it still became a very popular film. He mentions how acting is the most important thing when filming movies because if the acting sucks peoples attention will not be grabbed and people will not want to watch it.

Oren Peli is filmmaker and screenwriter and made very popular films. His strengths were important because he had the ability to create tension, giving people a jumpscare. Another thing that important is that he sticks to horror so he can only perfect and create better film sin the making.

After looking at reviews, there were many positives and negatives. People say it was boring and repetitive. Others say it was a great film, knowing that there was no money involved or experience. People mentioned over the course of the film it was great to see how their was a scary soundtrack that actually gave people a jump scare. The film was hand held and the actors were very good.

[jermainec]

Blog Entry 2

My topic is paranormal activity/supernatural films. I as briefly touched on the film, “The Sinister” in my last blog entry. As mentioned this film is a popular film of the paranormal/supernatural genre. “The Sinister” is a popular film.

A base overview of this film is that a new family moves into e new neighborhood and house. Prior to moving, the husband never told the family who died and what happened in that house. Apparently, the house they moved into was a previous site of a grisly murder. While Ellison was researching his last book, he discovers some odd videos of the home that unraveled a scraggly hair ghost that began lurking in their home. In the film, I notice how when Ethan Hawke found the serial murder footage there was a wicked crash in the footage. He turned the footage off and was petrified of what would happen next. An officer was invited into their home and they both found that there was a symbol in each of the murders. The symbol was associated with a pagan deity named “Bughuul”, this is where he consumes the souls of human children. This is important to mention because the film in this genre displays monsters, ghouls, ghosts, and other supernatural creatures. They believed that he lived in the South and that the children that were exposed to this ghoul were vulnerable. The girl Stephanie who had died in this home prior to Ethan Hawke's move in would continuously haunt and scare this family. Oren Peli does a great job by incorporating haunting sounds and cinematography mixing it with supernatural phenomena of a true crime. There were scenes where the lighting was flicking, and the possessed body of Stephanie was popping out. The scholarly article found mentions their found footage and how they mix in thrills, sounds, and light controls making producer more money and grabbing the audience’s attention. This is important to note because it shows how big of a role the soundtrack, cinematography, and light control play in horror films. From my experience, I watched a film a few years ago on a show called “Friends.” The film was a scene with no soundtrack. The soundtrack had no background laughter. After watching that scene, it came to me that without the background laughter, the show was not all that funny. So, I relate the soundtrack to horror because without the sound design, it may not give people a jump scare or a sense of fear while watching the film.

[jermainec]

Blog 1- Supernatural/Paranormal Films

Hi, this is my first blog entry. The topic I chose was paranormal/supernatural films. I chose this topic because I’ve see film or movies like “Paranormal Activity” directed by Oren Peli and “The Conjuring” directed by James Wan and I felt that I might be able to discuss some important content about this specific topic. This genre is a pretty popular genre. Many individuals like these types of film because they don’t feel a sense of fear and it may make them laugh. It also may be the fact they might believe in ghosts, demons, or any supernature phenomena.

Some overview of paranormal/supernatural film is a genre of unexplained stories that leave mysterious and questionable thought. These types of film involve ghosts, demons, goblins, witches, or any other strange creatures. This genre focuses on a making the audience feel a sense of fear or wonder which sometimes can terrify people’s thoughts on reality. Paranormal/Supernatural films draw from mythologies, cultural beliefs, and or legends. I say this because there is a lot of history where individuals talk about actually seeing ghost and demons that may have haunted them or someone else. Which is another reason why I say it leaves people questionable about reality. These films open peoples imagination then which leaves many individuals contemplating about the chances things like this will happen. Two films I want to touch base on are, “The Sinister” by Oren Peli and “The Witch” by James Wan.

First, “The Sinister” is a popular film. A base overview of this film is that a new family moves into e new neighborhood and house. Prior to moving, the husband never told the family who died and what happened in that house. Apparently, the house they moved into was a previous site of a grisly murder. While Ellison was researching his lasts book, he discovers some odd videos of the home that unraveled a scraggly hair ghost which began lurking their home. Oren Peli does a great job by incorporating haunting sounds and cinematography mixing it with supernatural phenomena of a true crime. The second film, “The Witch” by James Wan is another popular film of supernatural/paranormal activity. We touched on the film in our course. This film is about a puritan family in New England in the 1600s. This family is kicked out of their community, and they had no place to go. The family then established a farm in New England. Their son went missing, then they believe Thomasin had turned to witchcraft. There was a goat that they believed to be possessed. Luring people into the darkness and chaos. James Wan does a great job with jump scares and horrific scenes that leave audience in questionable thought. His supernatural film shows blood scene and unimaginable things while examining themes of a family.