Orphan Trailer Analysis

Orphan

This trailer conventionally and typically follows the structure all film trailers. It begins slow, showing us that the family is willing to adopt. Towards the middle of the trailer we begin to acknowledge that the child they adopt is troubled, that there is something wrong. The climax of the trailer shows a visual montage of different types of torment that the girl decides to put the mother of the family through.

During the trailer, the audience becomes aware of the genre as the middle of the trailer appears. We see the child become violent. She begins to scream. The scene then cuts to a text saying: ‘I think there is something wrong with Esther’ which tells the audience what the girls name is, Esther. The text is in black and white. These colours are associated with evil and purity which are common themes in horror. This film is one of the psychological horror genre as a main convention that we see in these types of horror is that they often include a disturbed individual who is most often the child. One convention that we see is that there are no on-screen deaths and that the antagonist first appears to be normal. The correct audience will be attracted through this trailer as they will be able to identify the things that they look out for most in the horror genre.

The settings in this trailer are to create realism. Schools are a very common setting for a psychological horror as we can see in this trailer where there are two school locations. This may be due to the fact that the killer may have had a bad childhood and wanted to get revenge on the other children. The main setting of the trailer is in the family home which is a common setting for a horror film. This may be because the audience are able to picture themselves in the same situation and would be more thrilling. A hospital is also seen as well as a park, etc. these are all stereotypical settings of the genre to create realism.

In a scene, we are in a park where the girl is. She sees a girl that bullied her about her dress sense. We follow her as she walked up to the girl on the top of the play equipment where she seems to push her off. The next shot is of the girl at the top of the slide. The shot id a low angle which shows power like it was her kingdom to rule.

Her dark costume appears old-fashioned and looks almost witch like which immediately shows us that she is evil and dangerous.

The lighting and colours of the trailer is a gradual change from beginning to end. The beginning of the trailer is a range of bright colours to show the audience that everything is okay, for example: when the girl is painting there is many colours on the page which makes it seem like everything is normal. This makes the trailer unclear as to what the genre of the film is. The trailer follows on to a scene where the girl is in the bathroom. She is seen as very angry as she kicks and screams. This is where the lighting begins to change. The lighting becomes darker and there is a blue tinge layering the scene. This suggests that there has been a change of emotion and everything is no longer normal. The lighting then proceeds to become darker until the scenes are almost black and white. This suggests that the contrasts between the characters as the black could represent the evil and the white could represent the innocence of other children. The skies begin to grow grey towards the end of the trailer and stay that way which creates a gloomy atmosphere, almost evil. 

In the beginning of the trailer, the facial expressions and body language is happy and calm. Every character is smiling and the mother and father have welcoming eyes. Each child, even the girl, have soft faces which shows the innocence of children in general. The trailer then moves on rapidly. The body language becomes very closed and the facial expressions become sterner. Our view on the girl begins to change. The girl gives evil glances and evil smirks at points which shows that she may have a plan on how to destroy the family. Her body language and facial expressions during the bathroom scene are shown as violent and angry. The other characters in the trailer also begin to change their facial expressions towards the end of the trailer, for the worse. They have fear and confusion in their eyes as to why it is happening to them. Other young children appear to look innocent and defenceless against the evil of Esther. As an audience, we begin to feel sorry for the family as the girl leads them in to her ‘death traps.’

The speed of editing usually starts off slow before it gradually becomes faster throughout the trailer. Tension is built up through this type of editing and it also creates suspense so it creates excitement for the audience. This is done as when it begins slowly, we are able to get a clear understanding of the basic narrative. As the speed builds it prepares the audience for the final burst of action in the end. The speed does not only create excitement and suspense of the railer, it also creates fear and eeriness that makes the audience scared. We appear to be looking at the action through Esther’s eyes as the black outs can be seen to give the sense of her eyes blinking as she watches her torment. Two occasions during the trailer we can see a white screen that appears with black text on it. This could represent Esther’s appearance. She is pale with an innocent face which contrasts her dark black hair and black clothing.