Analysing Horror Genre Opening Scenes - 'Midsommar'

The fourth opening scene from the horror genre I will be analysing is from 'Midsommar'.

               

The scene starts in a red lit room with a firefighter turning off a car's ignition. Instantly, enigma and mystery is created (a typical trope of the opening scenes of horror films, immediately unsettling the audience). From the start, the audience is filled with fear and anticipation as the terrifying non-diegetic violins build in intensity. The lighting throughout is low-key (with backlighting creating silhouettes) and it is hard for the spectator to clearly see what is happening. 

The pace of the editing is slow (typically creepy, as is common in the horror genre) and what little camera movement there is is similarly slow and unsettling. There is a dissolve into the next, equally gloomy and low-key lit shot, of the firemen walking up the stairs (shot from a bird's-eye-view, a common angle in horror films to signify that the characters have no control over what is happening). At this point there is very little narrative information being revealed to the audience. 

The camera tracks the firefighters into the bedroom where we see two adults being put into body bags (unexplained death is a common phenomenon in the horror genre), whilst the camera pans and slowly dollies in to another room where a girl is slumped on her floor. The sinister non-diegetic music continues to build and there are no other sounds apart from that. The slow camera movement and editing continue to build suspense and tension. As the camera gets closer to the girl we see that she has a hose attached to her mouth, which was connected to the car that the audience saw at the beginning. The bright colours of the girls top and the hose stand out compared to the deep blues and reds that engulf her. The girls eyes are wide open and her expression is one of pain; this type of body language is typical of the genre and the audience may believe that she is the first victim, so typical of the genre (though a brief glimpse of some writing on the computer screen might indicate that she is, in fact, the killer). 

The director then cuts to a tracking shot of a man walking in the snow; the location is an empty street, a typical setting for horror films. We also hear a woman screaming, which acts as a sound bridge as the director cuts to the inside of a low-key lit apartment. The woman’s screaming becomes louder, almost drowning out the music. The camera slowly zooms in close to the woman, with the audience almost being forced to watch this sad display of mourning because of the suspensefully slow pace of the camerawork.