As a sequel to a new type of horror film, "A Quiet Place 2" has actually achieved quite qualified results, continuing the style of the previous work. This film continues to focus on the sound of horror, and also makes a reasonable sense of the story. The expansion of the film, and the addition of a new two-line narrative structure, expands the threshold of the film and the layering of the story. Of course, it also adds a commercial flavor to the film. It can be said that there are pros and cons. As phenomenal films in horror films in recent years, how did these two films break out of traditional horror films? fresh entry point
In most traditional horror films, the starting point of horror is often the visual, that is, the familiar surprise, blurred lens, and classic back-to-back kills (of course, head-up kills and bow-head kills) and so on. The sudden change and inconsistency of front and rear vision to create an "illusion" and "abnormal" situation, people doubt their own vision to create an uncertain sense of panic, this method to a large extent It is a direct effect on the human nerve, that is, the common "sudden" stimulation. But this film focuses on another important but often overlooked angle—sound.
In fact, if you look closely, you can find that even in traditional horror films, a large part of the atmosphere is enhanced by the effect of the background soundtrack. Once the background music is weird, there must be high energy. Retreat now". However, the sound part in this film has been strengthened. In this film's "sound to death" setting, the sound is used as a guarantee for the survival of the characters in the film. Before this, I never felt that silence is a such a difficult thing. This makes the film silent and careful in most of the plot, and any action of the protagonist will affect the audience's attention. And once there is an accidental sound, it will make people suffocate for a while. At this time, another use of sound was also highlighted, that is - delay.
The eldest daughter in the film is a child who is inherently hard of hearing, and as soon as the film switches to her point of view, noise reduction is applied. And when a voice is started and the perspective is switched to the eldest daughter, it will immediately enter the noise reduction state, and the disaster has not yet come. At this time, the voice seems to be prolonged, and the audience is waiting for that terrifying moment to come. This kind of terrifying ordeal is sometimes more terrifying than the sudden stimulation, just like how long and tormented the prisoner is when the executioner swings his knife and falls.
The use of sound in the film is indeed a bit magical. In fact, in addition to the enhancement of pairing and mute itself, the film also strengthens our experience of sound from another angle, that is, ambient sound. The environment of the film is in a farm far away from the city where the leaves, the river and the gravel always use various subtle "noises" when the wind blows or someone walks by, such as bare feet stepping on the gravel, Or the sound of the river flowing. When most of the vocals in the whole film are reduced, the noise in the background is gradually clear. In the film, the father takes his son to the river and tells him that he can only speak when the ambient sound is loud enough. Originally a very normal communication, but now it has become extravagant, which further highlights how precious "sound" is in that world.
"Visible" atmosphere
In traditional horror films, the atmosphere is often created in a "dark" style, basically in an environment without lights, especially in high-energy clips, and the visibility is directly brushed to almost zero. Then add supernatural music and various strange sounds, in a word, it is to make the audience feel restless and give the audience a vague and unknown sense of fear. This kind of atmosphere echoes the entry point of traditional horror films, which is to bring a "sudden" stimulation by directly acting on the nerves of the audience. This kind of atmosphere is very effective in most cases, after all, for neural conditioning, people always realize what happened after they react first. It is natural to be frightened, but such a horror effect has its obvious marginal effect. When the audience has watched enough horror movies, they can already explore the scary laws of these horror movies. Naturally, there is also a corresponding response to high-energy clips. Psychological preparation, so the horror effect will be greatly clipped. So back to this film, the atmosphere of this film did not "turn off the lights" like traditional horror films, but instead emphasized the use of warm tones, making the whole picture brighter and even a little warmer. But such an atmosphere did not weaken the terrifying atmosphere, that is, in this seemingly harmonious environment, the monsters lurking outside were waiting for an opportunity to catch every sound, and any obvious sound might attract this murderous monster. Although the whole picture is visible, what is invisible is the danger of being strayed from the edge of any sound, which leads to the fact that even if the visibility of the picture is very high, the audience's psychological threshold is no longer in the picture, but the sound and sound in any picture. The "killer" in the shadows, and these visible details make people nervous.
Another feature in the atmosphere of this film is that it is seen, but not fully seen. Yes, the monsters in this film are not like the kind of ghosts and monsters in traditional films, but strange-shaped monsters, but because of their concealment and extremely fast movement, most of the time, only a hideous one can be seen. The figure flashed by, and then it was scarlet. In addition, the atmosphere during the confrontation with the monsters in the room was even more suffocating. Under the dim warm light, the monster's figure looked even more disgusting and weird, and with the setting of not being able to speak, it was quite a bit " Alien" feeling. It's probably a reference to some extent.
Amazing character set
The proportion of males and females in the characters in the whole movie has been kept in a very balanced state. In the first part, the father takes the young son and the mother takes the young daughter. After Dad hiccupped, an uncle came to take his place. There is a wonderful visual balance to such an arrangement of characters, especially after the second part, where the mother and son are together in the two timelines, and the uncle and daughter are together. And the two story lines echo each other. It was originally an adult taking a child to fight monsters and upgrade. Finally, the child finally grew up, and both sides ended with the child making up the last knife. Before that, both the daughter's guilt for her brother's death and the son's cowardice were contrasted in the last scene, and finally completed the closed loop of character growth. From guilt to redemption, from cowardice to bravery. It can be said that the growth of a generation can also be said to be the tragedy of a generation. On the adult side, the mother's image can be said to be the most amazing. The combination of red pajama skirt and ultra-shorts, plus a long gun, and the blue veins protruding on the arm, don't burst too much. From the character setting, this film is actually very simple and complete. Each character is a clean and neat image. He can hit and run, and the positioning is very accurate. It does not focus on the relationship between characters. There are too many entanglements, so that the focus of the perception is also placed on the horror point of the plot.
In general, these two seemingly new horror films are actually a bit opportunistic in terms of specifics. In fact, most of the settings have already been copied in alien horror films, but it is really innovative to emphasize the sound alone as one of two major points. This article does not do too much analysis and evaluation of movie reviews, but I simply analyzed the selling points and highlights. These are really remarkable places and the reasons why these two films can stand out at the box office. But the overall trend is that the taste of this series is gradually commercialized, and the artistic treatment of the new work is indeed weakened compared with the previous work. More cool points are more and more. The frequency of monsters has increased, and the silent links have also been relatively reduced, basically belonging to the rigid monsters. So I also feel a little lack of stamina, and I always feel that there is a rhythm of 3, so let's observe a wave.
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