Opening Horror film; The Woman in Black

The woman in black.

The opening two minutes of The Woman in Black start of with setting the audience in an old fashioned place as the directors have dressed the children who are focused on in the opening scene in old fashioned clothes, playing with a china tea set and china dolls. This makes the audience feel creeped out all ready because of the way the little girls are playing with them.

The music in the background sounds like an old fashioned children rhyme. It starts off slowly and is quite relaxing however scary because the audience know something will happen because it builds tension. As the music is creating tension all the children look behind them at the same time and all focused on the same thing; We don't get to see what they are looking at which creates an enigma towards the audience as they don't know who they are looking at.

Once the audience know they are looking at something; all the children stand up and drop whatever is in there hands, this smashes and makes the audience wonder what has happened to them because they seemed so happy before they looked behind them. They are all silent and turn towards a window, they start walking towards it and on the way standing on everything they were playing with making them all break. As they are walking towards the window the music begins to get faster and the base of it gets louder and more effecting towards the audience changing the nursery rhyme into something even scarier. 

Once they arrive to the window the shot begins to zoom in and stops as they are all fitted into it. With no hesitation they all jump. As they do this the music suddenly stops and you here a cry from there mother say " my babies" this makes the audience feel shocked and know that bad things will happen throughout the film.

As the opening scene showed only children the audience then know that children will be the main focus of the film and that the children will also be the main focus for the antagonist. Children seem to be the main target because they seem vulnerable and easy to take advantage on. We do not see the antagonist in the opening scene which creates an enigma as the audience will want to know more about them so they can look out for it throughout the film.

The target audience for this film is 15 years and above. They have made sure that they have got this across well by the music and differnt shots they have chosen thrioughout the opening twov minutes. They have made sure it isnt too scary however making sure it still makes the teenages and above jump and feel intuged to watch the rest of it.