Textual Analysis

Textual Analysis of the opening of the movie Underworld (2003)

The opening corporate insignias are displayed briefly to a black backdrop, to the sound of screams, in sharp white lettering. The theme is already set. The steely lettering of the word UNDERWORLD revolves onto the screen to the distorted yelp of a wolf (or so we believe). Every detail from the connotations of shadow and darkness behind a black backdrop to the inevitably horrifying screams introducing the innocent businesses involved, all give prominent evidence that the movie Underworld (it's title itself implies enough) is not one filled with sunshine or happiness.

It does however contain a certain beauty. The slow, long track through the arches of a steeple tower in an unknown metropolis, tinted an eerie, miserable blue, continue to suggest the macabre nature of what's to come. Religious imagery is used from the off, and as the camera cranes down and reveals the statuesque figure of Selene (portrayed by Kate Beckinsale) the Gothic nature of this production grows more and more apparent. She squats, clad head to toe in black, hair strewn by wind and enduring rain as lightning flashes above, her trench coat billowing behind her from atop the treacherous stone railing she perches upon. Black, as mentioned previously, is itself significant to traditions of the horror genre to signify darkness, malevolence, and terrors of the supernatural. Unnaturally luminescent forget-me-not blue eyes, mesmerizing enhanced through CGI, combined with our protagonists deathly white marble skin, leave little to the imagination as to whether or not she is human. The thunderstorm brewing, her perilous location miles above the city she scowls upon, both suggest an air of continual fantasy, intricated with her sinister aesthetic, bring the word Vampire correctly to the forefront of assumptions.


If enough clues hadn't yet tipped off the audience, the voiceover of ancient wars, mythological evils, internal warfare and in fact mention the sole purpose of her continued existence, is sure to set the stage, when combined with the irresistibly potent imagery, for a slick spin on an age-old concept.


The contemporary portrayal of supernatural warfare is officially clamped to the audience's perceptions as, after a brief nod to a similar entity at equally awe inspiring heights, the character of Selene plummets earthwards, lancing past unfathomable storeys at inhuman velocity, to arrive on the roadside, unharmed and as if having put one foot in front of the other, striding onwards entirely unfazed. The wording of the voiceover, combined with a visual conclusion she draws with her Vampiric colleague, summarise both the originality of the genre, a combination of fantasy-horror-cum-supernatural-warfare and out and out action-thriller, and storyline, as well as give an engaging portrayal of what the audience is in store for as her war progresses. Three minutes in.

Textual Analysis of the opening of the movie The Omen (1976)

Red font on a blacked screen rarely suggests happy endings. The thousands of connotations of both colours suggested individually, regardless of being combined - evil, blood, anger and darkness just as an example of some - rarely, particularly in cinema, give impressions of anything other than a Horror. As an operatic orchestra combined with choir vocals are heard startlingly, religious turmoil is impossible to deny as a feature of the following production. Particularly as even the name of the unfortunate child who merely portrays Damien fades onto screen, and is met with a climactic crescendo from the entourage of voices.

"The Omen" fades on screen to a sombre violin chord, accompanied by the scarlet outline of a boy, his shadow casting the shape of an inverted cross. The symbol of the inverted cross is rarely a positive image in religion, and offers even more malice projected by a child.

The credits vanish, to be replaced by a man, expensively dressed, in the back of a limousine or taxi - despite being clarified as the cars entirety fills the camera with the actor's equivalent of a medium shot, it was logically to surmise this man was being driven in a limo. During this introduction, the location, Rome, which happens to be the religious capital of Europe, appears in white, a stark contrast to the night's sky above the busy traffic streaming throughout the city. It is accompanied by a date - June sixth, six o'clock AM. The number sixty-sixth, also commonly recognised as being the "number of the beast" in Christian mythology, foreshadows the events to follow. During this furtive ferrying, the voice of an elderly Italian accept repeats the mortifying phrase "the child is dead." The audience can, so far, predict events from then on aren't to about to be jovial.

An interior establishing shot moved throughout an aging wooden hall, a nun in traditional black habit heading away from the viewer as the camera descends. This shot, to add extra discomfort to the discerning opening, is a point-of-view shot, from above.

The silence of the scene is already somewhat troublesome, particularly after the busy highway recordings from the previous road-shoot. Sobriety abounds. At long last, muttering begins to become audible hushed voices, until at last, a conversation is brought into shot. The suited man from the back-seat of the limousine proceeds to discuss the death of his child with a man in religious attire. This seems almost a fairly logical situation after the death of one's offspring, but after the introduction thus far, and the suggestion to adopt said religious man offers after five minutes or so's conversing, all seem just a little out of the ordinary.

The genre is established, a lead role introduced, and the plot is fully hinted at without revealing a twist or turn anywhere. An introduction to anything ought to aim to achieve this much information in the space of one-hundred and eighty seconds.

Textual Analysis of the opening of the movie Constantine (2005)

The reasonably recent release of the film Constantine, initiates just what it is within the first five minutes. Perhaps the first thirty seconds.

The trademark Warner Brothers logo enters in silence, golden and perfectly conventional. Crackling sounds, the sound of crumbling woodwork and dirt, soon replace this harmonious nothing, as the very shine is peeled away and decimated to ashes. The cloudy blue sky begins to darken, replaced by a hellish amber horizon, scorched earth, and scarlet flashes of thunder, as the insignia fades into ashes to reveal another, once again the incinerated husk of it's genuine aesthetic, and again, until nothing remains and the screen fades to black. The symbolism is clear - an apocalyptic environment replacing what we know, hell on earth and it's unalterable horizon.

And so we enter the prologue opening sequence proper. White lettering appears over a black screen, informing the audience of a religious prophecy - reasonably conventional in the genre of fantasy-horror. We enter the first scene.

A subtitle reading Mexico appears briefly in front an establishing shot of a collapsing stone church, or at least the structural remnants. This immediately brings to mind, particularly in combination with the previous text, a theme of Christian mythology. The camera zooms through the stone arches, a stray dog pressing its snout into the earth, until we cut to a medium long shot of two men squatting within the structure. They appear to be foraging beneath the sand, presumably for something of value. An old car speeds along the dirt road outside of the church, playing a foreign track over the stereo. This, in my opinion, is merely to excuse and aid the audience's suspension of belief before what happens next.

One of the men, wearing a soiled red sportscoat with some equally shabby trousers, and clearly of local or of similarly Latin origin, steps forward from his crouch. His foot collapses some floorboards underneath, and immediately the camera cuts beneath, within the orifice, to capture his reaction. A hollow, sombre sound begins to emanate, from what we believe to be the hole. This creates total fascination from what would ordinarily be an everyday occurance, as the tension rises as the man reaches one arm into the shadows, something no one I imagine would feel particularly keen on. Once again looking from close to a point of view perspective, we now witness him withdraw a furled up Nazi flag. This brings to mind a dozen instant connotations in the eyes of almost any audience. Initially, the surprise at seeing such an article: notably due to it's antiquity, but more prominently due to the common knowledge of the horrifying Nazi regime of World War II (a subject previously noted upon in the pre-scene text), yet also the suspicion as to why such a thing resides buried beneath the floorboards of an abandoned church in Mexico.

The unfavourable echoey rumbling reaches feverr pitch as the man stares about in panic, clutching his unravelled prize close to his chest. The flag he has unwrapped reveals a runic golden spear-tip (only distinguishable from a knife due to the introductory text) and he seems instantly, sinisterly attached. The audience immediatly is able to recognize something diabolic has been discovered, largely due to the continual use of sound effects and his own reaction.

The introduction scene continues, and if the audience was somehow unable to distinguish hints of the paranormal, by the time the protagonist is introduced, they will have.

Textual Analysis of the opening of the movie Pitch Black (2000)

Pitch Black starts like almost every other film. The Universal Pictures insignia, almost symbolically a revolving planet, was most likely left plain and simple by the production crew, referencing the science-fiction genre. The following Interscope Communications intro is displayed - a shabby, dark room with studio lights in eerie corners pans across the screen until the logo appears, once again a possible reference to the films theme of darkness, claustrophobic terror and the unknown approaching.

The music, a low, bass-filled and traditionally sci-fi theme is heard, gradually becoming louder, as the camera, as in uncountable other futuristic, space-set films, pans slowly and zooms outwards across the surface of a space-shuttle, eventually revealing its entirety drifting through space towards and ominous ring of purply dust and matter. The title appears, reading Pitch Black after anothing brief faded in appearance of the production companies. The font is clean-cut, modern, and fades in and out in pace with the space shuttle. Shadowing on the letters is cleverly used to contrast the font enough to be read while still maintaining the obviously symbolic pitch-black colour of the words. The music reaches a crescendo as this happens.

A voice over by Vin Diesel, who portrays the protagonist, speaking low and gruffly, begins. He mentions a fictional phrase, "Chryo-sleep" and explains that in this "Chryo-sleep", all but the primitive side of human nature is left dormant and no longer in control, leaving way for animalistic instincts to overule logic or what's considered rational human behaviour. The mention of humans as animals gives fair warning of the upcoming nature of both character behaviour throughout the film - revolving around the needs of the one to survive despite others, and his own personality - he is clearly intelligent enough to summise this theory, and a dark, unsavioury character, displayed by his willingness to accept this theory, and that of human's being merely animal at their cores.

The camera begins flashing within a red-tinted, distorted view of a man's face, rigged up in some kind of tubing apparatus in a tank of some variety. Strobe lighting, the colour of lightning, a traditional element of horror, is continually flickering on screen, giving the impression a flash-back or distortion of chronological events is occuring. The innards of a space ship is shown as we move from person to person, each in their respective "Chryo-sleep" condition - unconscious in the red glow. The protagonists voice-over continues to form our opinion of him, thus-far unnamed, as somewhat wild and more than a little diabolic, as in the continues grumble he explains the scent of the other characters - surmising their careers and personalities from the toolbelts they wear, the dirt on their shoes, their gender, any detail other than their words and actions at the time.

Already, barely one-hundred and eighty seconds in, the largely murky, eerily-distorted content conventional to a horror is portrayed in a variety of manners, and our intrigue is sparked by the bizarrity of the protagonist and his own anti-heroic tendencies merely from voice-over. Combined with his use of fictional dialect and terms only created for the purpose of filling out the universe of the movie, a fascinating alienation of the audience keeps interest high.