Scream - Directed by Wes Craven

Though this film is a horror film, I found it important that I analyse the opening scene's because our film is influenced by it. This will be brief, as the last film I did a textual analysis on (Red Eye) got rather lengthly! The film starts off with the title dropping down, and turning from white into a dark red, which is a metaphor for something innocent (white) being killed (blood red).

After this the film goes straight into Casey (Girl) picking up the phone and talking to the stranger. She is dressed in white which shows her innocence and we can also see this as she talks to this man, by the way she politely talks to him and puts up with him repeatedly calling her. As the conversation goes on, we see Casey and the stranger connecting as they get into a debate over scary movies.
There is a lot of foreshadowing in the opening, such as when Casey pulls out a kitchen knife when she is naming horror films and the pathetic fallacy of the dark windy weather outside. However just as the conversdation starts getting somewhere the stranger drops the famous line "I want to know who I'm looking at" and the story takes a scary turn as we watch Casey panicking. This is where the audience get hooked in to the story and starts to pay real interest. As this is happening, the popcorn on the stove is slowly growing just as the tension is in the scene.
It starts getting real when we see the stranger interacting with the house (ringing the doorbell etc) towards the end of the opening we see the horror element of the film as we see Casey's boyfriend "Steve" tyed up. I chose to analyse this film as Hannah and I have chosen to do a "Damsel in Distress" stalker opening just like the one I have described. So to make sure we get our opening right, i chose to analyse "Scream".

To watch the opening click on the link below and watch the first 5 minutes of "Scream"