Research: Comparison Essay; Wrong Turn, Dead Mary & Dead Wood

When watching a horror film, there are many typical codes and conventions, related specifically to the teen horror genre. The two types of codes are:

Technical codes 

Technical codes include; camera shots, angles and movements, lighting, titles, editing and sound (both diegetic and non diegetic)

Symbolic 

Symbolic codes are the main elements of mis-en-scene (translating to 'put in scene'.) The different elements of mis-en scene are as follows - makeup, props, and costumes. Example: If a man on stage is wearing a dark black cape and dark makeup that is thought to be 'gothic' the audience may have a perception/judgment based of this, they will have their own representation of the mans character.

Conventions: Conventions are typical features in a movie, which the audience expects to see feature in a particular genre. For example, in a Romcom a typical convention is that there is a man and woman who fall in love, have a horrendous argument and then get back together in the end because they were 'meant to be'. 

Dead Wood- Synopsis

Four friends leave the city for a relaxing camping weekend in the woods. Once they get settled, a strange young woman enters their campsite looking for her lost boyfriend. One of the four goes missing and the rest are pitted against mysterious forces in a fight for their very survival.

Dead Mary- Synopsis

Kim and her boyfriend Matt have just broken up, but they travel together to a cottage nearby a lake to spend the weekend with their friends Eve, Dash and his wife Amber and Baker and his new girlfriend Lily. The atmosphere becomes heavy with the situation between Kim and Matt, and one of them suggests them to play "Dead Mary". Matt, Eve and Dash summon the evil witch repeating her name three times in front of a mirror with a candle. Along the night, Matt hears weird noises, is killed and returns to life, while the fiend possesses part of the group. Without knowing who is possessed, the rest of the group fights to survive.

Wrong Turn opens with two friends rock climbing, when all of a sudden they are both killed by a vicious and mysterious unknown force. Six friends then find themselves trapped in the woods of West Virginia, hunted down by "cannibalistic mountain men grossly disfigured through generations of in-breeding." 

Wrong turn has a lot of great editing techniques, which have been used effectively to give the audience a sense of fear. 

Wrong turn starts with a birds eye view shot/ crane shot of the couple climbing the rock, featuring non-diegetic music which cuts as the dialogue begins. The crane shot is used to show the audience how high above the ground these actors are, which in itself creates a sense of fear and worry for the audience. The dialogue to begin with is slow, as is all the shots of the man and woman climbing up the rope; this is building up the suspense. As soon as the man is announced dead, his partner begins cutting on the rope and at this point the editing of the shots begins to speed up creating intensity and connoting fear and panic to the audience. 

A false jump is used as the woman begins to fall, the audience expects her to fall down off the rock completely but the rope springs back and she is safe. 

A typical convention featuring in Wrong turn is the woman spotting the car and just as the audience think she is about to escape and make it back to safety again she trips over.  

Wrong turn is similar to Dead Wood because someone dies within the first 3 minutes. 

There are other similarities such as there is blood featuring in both films trickling down the victims; this is another typical horror film convention. Likewise in both films, the man dies first and the woman is left even more vulnerable than before without a male to protect her. 

Differently, In the opening of 'Dead Mary' no one dies, However likewise in with 'Dead Wood' and 'Wrong Turn' there is this idea of a couple, and the woman being more vulnerable. In 'Wrong Turn' we get the impression that the man is the strongest one, as he makes it up the top of the mountain much quicker, and that his woman is very reliant upon him as she calls for his help, this links in to 'Dead Mary' because the man comes to the woman's aid when she needs help, she is relieved to see him because again typically in a horror film the woman always depends upon a man for safety and support; hence why the men usually die before the women to portray the women characters as weak and helpless, this gives the audience a sense of unease as they're expecting something exceedingly tragic to happen to the woman later on in the film.

Exactly like Wrong Turn, 'Dead Wood' starts off with a crane shot, taking us through the canopies of the forest. In relation to the other two horror films, 'Dead Wood' is also set in a large secluded area which is a typical horror film convention. The secluded area puts the characters in each of the three films into danger because they're in an unfamiliar setting, where no one else is around but the other characters in the film making it difficult to seek help. 'Dead Mary' also supports this idea as it features another typical convention of the horror genre which is the loss of phone/radio signal which links in nicely to the convention of a secluded area, as secluded areas do lack good levels of signal again making it harder to seek help and communicate with others which adds suspension to the film. 

'Dead Mary' contains no non-diegetic music throughout the whole opening, unlike the other two film openings. Personally I think that using no non-diegetic music throughout the opening is a positive thing because it is different and doesn't need to use non-diegetic music to create an uneasy atmosphere. The diegetic sound of the sign post creaky builds up this unease, that perhaps the other films would lack to begin with if they didn't include unusual background music. 

On a related note, in all three horror films the women are all wearing very little clothing and have a lot of flesh exposed. This has sexual connotations; it also suggests that these characters may lack intelligence as that is the representation given off by their revealing choice of clothes. For example, In 'Dead Wood’ the woman is wearing a knee length skirt with a slit in the front and back and also a pair of heeled boot, which is highly inappropriate for going camping, this shows lack of common sense and intelligence. Her choice of clothing puts her at higher risk of danger because it'd be extremely hard to run away from a psychotic murderer in her choice of footwear. 

Overall, I think "Dead Mary" is the best opening. The titles are written in white font, which represents purity and innocence, they then change to red, which signifies blood and danger. This is the only film out of all three openings that doesn't open with non-diegetic noise. Instead it opens with the creaking noise of the signpost, which is very eerie. The film, likewise with the others is set in a secluded wooded area featuring a helpless female wearing very little clothing. The woman is shown perhaps more helpless than the females featuring in the other openings because she has loss of phone signal, radio signal and a broken down car. These are all typical horror conventions that 'Dead Mary' represents.