Genre Research: Premonition

 One movie within the thriller genre is Premonition. This movie had a very interesting plot and was a nice movie to watch overall. A few elements of the thriller genre that can be seen within this movie are the closeup shot, muted colored clothing, natural makeup and hair, low and high angles, dramatic, eerie music, zoom, panning, cross-cutting, over-the-shoulder shots, tracking, and the hand-held camera movement. All of these elements were used to create suspense within the movie. The closeup shot was used, specifically, to clearly show the emotions being displayed on the actor's face. There were many moments within the film where the main character was finding a discovery or something odd was happening to them, that used the closeup shot. This choice in shot allowed the audience to clearly see what the main character’s reaction was to those events, how the other characters may have reacted to the main character’s reaction, and vice versa. The high angle used, in particular, showed the actor’s insignificance within the film, which was especially important with the plot in mind. The hand-held movement was used as well during action packed scenes to make them seem more intense. Some elements of the genre that we did enjoy were the closeups, natural hair, and high angles. Like we stated before, the closeups allowed us to see the emotions on the actor’s faces, demonstrating their reactions to the events occurring in such an upside down world, as displayed in the movie. This may have been due to this movie in particular, but the closeups used really enhanced the film. We also enjoyed the high angles in the movie because they developed the plot and added a nice touch to the film that we thought was, “cool.” Even though the hair may have been bland and natural, we enjoyed the hairstyles because they looked very nice on the actor and gave inspiration for our own hair. This may not have been the intention of the hairstylist/director, but nevertheless, we received inspiration for our hair. Elements of the genre we did not like were the fast suspense and crosscutting and the dramatic, eerie music. Overall, we enjoyed these elements, but there was a bit too much crosscutting/suspense or too loud music in segments of the movie. During some parts of the film, for example, it seemed a bit too chaotic and hard to follow along with the fast crosscutting. This may have been the goal, but we, personally, did not enjoy this feature. The suspense during the last part of the film was a bit too much as well, and kept us on the edge of our seats. Again, this was most likely the intention of the director, but we did not like this feature very much as it caused too much anxiety for our liking. In some parts of the film, the dramatic, eerie music was slightly loud and overpowered what was occurring within the scenes. Although the use of this music as a whole was nice, parts of the music were too loud for our liking.