A personal response to 'Crimson Peak'

At the beginning of the clip the mise en scene creates an eerie feeling by using low key lighting from the window at the end of the hall. The only other light comes from the candles that the character is holding; this could show that she is the only living thing in the house as she is the only one that brings light and she is seen wearing a white dress which contrasts with the dark background. The scene opens with a mid shot and the camera dollying to show the female character as she walks through a dimly lit hallway. The camera slowly pans down to show her hand turning the door knob, this forces the audience to focus on what she is doing, showing that the door will have some significance. We then see the camera zoom in to a close up on the characters shocked face as we hear the diagetic sound of a dog barking. This causes the audience to feel uneasy as the character previously implied that the dog was shut in the room however as the camera does a shot reverse shot from her face, to the dog and then back to her face both the character and the audience realise that this is not the case. The non diagetic screeching music picks up as the camera again focuses on the door; the music tells the audience that something is about to happen and it often indicates a climax of a film. As the scene progresses we see a long shot showing the character, the dog and the setting; this reveals just how creepy and dark the hallway is which follows genre stereotypes of gothic horror films like this one. The camera cuts to a close up focusing on the ladys face however we can see slightly over her shoulder this time which is different to the other close ups in the scene; this causes the audience to look at the background before the camera quickly pans down to show a red demon groaning and crawling across the floor. The next shot is being filmed from a low angle from behind the demon, this may show that although the female character is scared of the demon, she still has power as the demon is looking up at her This shot also gives the audience a close view of the gruesome demon as the depth of field shows both the things close to the camera and the things far away.  We then see a close up of the front of the demon as it crawls towards the camera. The diagetic groaning is loud and unnatural but still human like which makes the audience feel uncomfortable. The camera then dollys to follow the lady as she runs down the hall and gets into an elevator and we again see a close up of the dog as she picks it up. This shows that she is very attached to the dog as even though she is scared, she still wants to keep it safe. She steps out of the elevator and we see a long shot showing the setting of a red cave. The use of the colour red in this scene contrasts to the prior scene as the lighting changed from being cool toned upstairs to being warm toned downstairs. The change in setting keeps the audience interested as it gives them something to look at. The use of red in this film may also symbolise evil as both the demon on the floor and the walls of the cave downstairs are red and there appears to be a lot of evil, supernatural things going on. As the camera shows the new setting, the sound of the demon groaning is still audible however now it is non diagetic. This shows the audience that it is still there and the character has not escaped it, which could suggest that it may return later on in the film. After establishing the setting, the camera zooms in to a close up of the ladys face as she looks at a lock on a box. Light seems to shine on the box, making it stand out from the background and showing its significance. We then see an extreme close up on words engraved into the metal on the box as the character reads it out loud. This tells the audience that this is very significant as it is shown in a close up and they hear the word being said so it ensures that they focus on it and remember it.