The Grudge Analysis - Rosie Gunnell

The Grudge

The grudge is a good film to analyse because the opening scene follows the same strategy of what we are planning to do for our piece. There is a vulnerable character, in this case a young girl, in a house alone with a troubled old woman.

Here we see the back of a young girl who shows curiosity towards the noise in the loft of the house. The darkness of the room contrasts with the small light from the lighter she is holding to create an eerie atmosphere for the audience alongside the music which follows the same theme.

There is very little camera movement around the character, only a slight hand movement effect to create an uneasy feeling for the audience. We are also given a close up of the girl’s face when she turns around so we are able to indentify how she is feeling about the situation she has found herself in. The director has done this to sustain the mood in the scene.

The camera pans to the right and the wooden pillar form the loft moves across the lense to create the feeling that as the audience, we are part of the scene to make them feel the fright the director is trying to create. The non diegetic music slightly builds up and becomes louder when overlapping what the diegetic sounds in the scene from her actions.

As the character keeps turning around after the camera has stopped moving, the music gets loud quickly and her facial expression shows the audience that something is going to happen and creating suspense and tension.

The camera quickly jumps to an extreme close up of the creature’s face as a point of view shot from the girl and makes a unique chilling sound that the audience can relate to the creature. The shot of this face changes with great speed to the next shot so the lack of contact with the creature makes the audience feel anxious with what they see.

The music disappears and all we are left to hear are the screams from the girl and the unusual and scary sounds the creature from the loft is making with an increase in volume to raise the adrenalin and heart rates of the audience. The audience feed on the adrenalin levels to draw them into the fear of the film.