Symbolism: Research and Incorporation into Hail

Symbolism

Research

There are many ways in which symbolism can be incorporated into horror films. A well known film that uses symbolic techniques is The Brood 1979 or more recently The Woman in Black.

Religion is very prevalent in horror, commonly playing around with the concept of life and death, man playing God or demons in or outside of himself, good versus evil, innocence versus corruption and spirituality. The use of religious artefacts are commonly used to send physical subliminal messages to the audience as well as discrete modes of religious symbolism portrayed through

symbols. Popular symbols are often stemmed from old fashioned rituals and religions as they create an eerie tone to any sequence as well as the fact that it installs fear into the viewer for example through the idea of a spiritual being, being alive all these years later through inanimate objects. Death is naturally pervasive in any horror genre and therefore there are countless mise-en-scene objects and representative features such as coffins, gravestones, skeletons and angels of death as a few examples. These can all be conventionally symbolic but as mentioned it can also be more subliminal that the audience may not notice upon first glance.

How did we used symbolism in our film opening?

Therefore in our media product, we decided to use religious symbolism in the sense that we included a fast paced straight cut to a close up of a shadow of the rosary bead swinging. This connotes death and unanswered prayers perhaps by the unmerciful killing that is being foreshadowed here. Moreover, it could also be symbolic of danger such as the devil or an evil spirit corrupting the taxi driver into murdering the protagonist. Moreover, we also included a fake candle as a part of the trophy killers souvenir that was hung from his wing mirror as we thought that this would symbolize the antagonist having connotations of an evil spirit as well as including the convention of the corruption of light and therefore the corruption of innocence. Another way in which we used symbolism is when the antagonist lays her dead body down and the shot pans upwards to reveal him walking away, the lighting is used to create a silhouette of the antagonist. This is symbolic of death and destruction in the sense that it conceals his true identity similar to that of the devil and Judas.

The final use of symbolism was portrayed through the use of colour.

 

Within our horror opening we included majority of dark colours and often contrasted them with white. White therefore being attached to the female protagonist to conventionally portray her as innocent and pure juxtaposing with the antagonist who wears dark clothing driving a black cab, symbolic of danger and evil.