Analysis of the opening titles of Insidious

Analysing the opening titles for insidious



The opening titles of insidious have many aspects that can establish genre, character and narrative. These aspects are,setting, props, lighting, costume and make-up, movement and framing and composition.

 The mise en scene of the opening titles includes the setting,costumes,lighting,characters,make-up and props. The costumes aren't very clear on the opening titles as we only see ghostly figures and shadows, we see a ghostly lady holding a candle and she is wearing very dark clothing, a connotation of dark is bad and evil so this suggests the woman is evil. The lighting is low key in the opening titles this creates a scary , mysterious feeling to the audience. These feelings link to the conventions of the genre which is horror. The setting is a family home the opening titles show every room in black and white which creates a sense of mystery and spookiness which also links to the horror genre. The characters in this film aren't really shown in the opening tiles, only in a family photo of all four of them together so we can't find out much about the characters in the titles. There are alot of props used in the opening tiles to create a realistic feel to the house of the family. One of the props the grandfather clock is shown alot this could be suggesting importance. We don't see much make-up in the film only on the ghostly woman holding a candle her make up is done to make her look pale which creates a sense of ghostliness. The titles of the film are in red, connotations of red are danger and blood this links to the horror genre. The sound in these titles is there to create a tense feeling for the audience and at the start there is non diagetic sound. The music that cover the rest of the opening titles is eerie and creates a sense of mystery.

The title sequence attracts the audience because we are made to feel like we want to know more as we don't see much of the characters and don't find out much so we want to know more by watching the film. Also the tense feeling and fear gives you a nervous feeling but you also want to find out what is going to happen for example, who is the ghost? why is she in the house? I consider the target audience to be teenagers as they are at an age where they aren't too scared to watch the horror film and they also like to have a laugh with friends being scared at watching it too. The age rating is a 15 so this suggests the main audience age as it is too scary for younger people to watch and it could make them really uncomfortable and frightened. The film is produced by FilmDistrict and this is not shown in the opening titles which could be a bad thing as you don't know who the film is produced by which is an important piece of information.