Texual Analysis Of Resident Evil

We had to review the first opening minutes of a movie based around of our choosen genre, mine was zombie horrors and for that, I used Resident Evil.

Textual analysis

 Resident Evil

The following is a textual analysis on a zombie/horror genre – Resident Evil.

In the first two minutes of resident evil, we are introduced to the setting of the laboratory. A virus breaks out in ‘the hive’ and the computer system realises things are bad. The computer goes into suicide mode and kills everyone in the ‘hive.’

In the opening scene of resident evil we are place to a black screen, showing us nothing at first. Then we can slowly see a prick of light. The camera moved forwards and we find ourselves looking at a man in a laboratory in a virus contamination suit. This makes us feel eerie, as we leave the darkness and head into a cold looking lab room. We see a glass container holding a blue colour liquid that we don’t know much about at this time. But we see it gets placed into a heavy sliver box and locked away tightly. This makes us feel curious about what’s in the box and what it could possibly be. Then we get a close up of the man n the suit although we cant see a lot of him because the glass is reflecting the light and so we feel almost as if this character has something to hid.  The male is then out of the suit and we get a close up of him throwing one of the glass containers holding the blue liquid., as it smashed on the floor, the man leaves in a hurry. We get a glimpse on him, but we still can’t make up his face. It’s still being hidden.  The doors he leaves locks automatically and it seems as if the door is locking aggressively to get a since of the man being in a hurry and maybe the status he is being given.

    A close up of the smashed liquid on the floor is being panned upwards to se a vapour lifting into the air and going into the air vents. The screen then goes back.

The music/sound used seems very hard and cold. We hear the resident evil theme beginning to play as we enter the world of resident evil. The sounds are clear and simple yet they mean a lot and have a dark and cold feeling to them. We mostly hear glass clanking and being lifted up. We hear doors whooshing open and then slamming shut and locking by themselves. Giving the viewers a sense of being in the lab there with him. when the container spills on the floor, the glass smashing sound is echoed and amplified to tell us that what just happened isn’t good and so we had to hear it and pay attention to it. Also when this happens the music stops. Meaning that that small moment in the opening of the film is what the movie is going to be based on and the events that will occur.

What I’ve learnt from the opening of the film is

• you don’t need to show any zombies to make it scary in the opening
• you don’t need a lot to happen to get your point across
• doing or saying little can actually be a lot in movie language

What I’ve learnt that doesn’t help in the opening of this film

• is getting a real sense of were you are or what’s going on
• don’t know the back story to the movie and there is no dialogue