The Happening poster

The Happening is a survival horror thriller movie. It is about an unkown disease that is causing people to commit suicide in 'convenient' ways. The hero, Mark Wahlberg, has to try and get off the northern coast of America to avoid this disease. Eventually, they all survive (of course) and live happily ever after. Actually, I can relate this to media as this is a stereotypical ending to a horror thriller film, where the main characters would normally survive the apocalypse and end up returning to their normal lives. Anyway, on with the rest of the analysis.

 

The movie's trailer uses a combination of diagetic and non-diagetic sounds for effect. Diagetic sounds can be heard by the characters and non-diagetic sounds cannot, so for example the trailers soundtrack is a non-diagetic sound. Speaking of the soundtrack, it is used effectively to build up tension and make the audience in some ways more scared than the characters. This also means the audience can relate to the characters, as they do not know whats coming next either. This effect is also achieved effectively using diagetic sounds- Things like floorboards creaking or heavy breathing all add to the fear factor of both the characters and the audience.

 

Also, the body language does a good job in showing the audience what the characters are thinking, for example, at the beginning when the characters are all on the train. At first, everyone's body language is normal- Just them getting on with their daily business. Then, when the train abruptly stops, their body langauge changes again. This time it seems more like confusin, as people begin looking around puzzled on what's occuring. It shoudl be noted however that no one expressively shows panic, everyone appears to be relatively calm, just confused. When everyone gets off the train, the general thought appears to be the same. No-one is screaming or showing any signs of panic with their bodies, so it can be assumed people are stilljust confused. However, when the train driver reveals that they have lost contact with the station Mark Wahlberg becomes the first person in the group of civillians to panic.

A different moment in the trailer shows a police officer casually walking in the streets before the screen turns black. We hear nothing, and when the video comes back the man is laying, dead in the streets. This moment of blackness, it could be said, is what actually happens when you die.Everything just turns black as if to signify the end, and then the cop is dead. This is plausibe, as death is a running theme throughout the trailer and the actual film, making it possible the director purposely included this otherwise meaningless scene to show death will play a key part in the movie.

The narrative during one scene was also cleverly done. A man in the trailer (seemingly some kind of government official perhaps?) explains that there is a 'situation'. He then proceeds to name the symptoms of this 'situation' (disease) and as he is naming them, it shows several diferent people who are showing the symptoms (a woman sitting on a park bench, unable to speak as the man explains one symptom is a "loss of speech"). This method is used effectively as it gives the viewers examples of what these symptoms do to a person.

That's this analysis done. My next analysis will likely be on the Inception trailer, so stay tuned!