Hostel Trailer

An Interesting Trailer

 

Analysis

Hostel is an interesting choice to study when developing ideas of horror film and horror film trailers. It is a conventional film in the horror genre, as it includes the expected features of a horror, such as blood, death, good and bad characters and highly dramatic scenes. The trailer starts with dim lighted shots of the creepy setting with close ups of water dripping to set the dingy, scary scene. Captions which relate to the setting, there is a place' are used to give the audience a sense of the plot. The text which is used is orange and quite bright compared with the dim, dark background. The texts starts big, jumping out at the audience and then gets smaller. This could represent the audience being drawn into the film, which would immediately grab their attention. After the first caption there is a long shot of a man wearing a type of builders uniform with a transparant mask on, he is holding a hose and is placed in the centre of the shot, showing that something creepy will happen involving characters or a character dressed in this way. It gives the audience a quick feel of what the film will be about. There is then a second caption, 'where all your darkest' and then a medium close up of a shirtless man having a cloth taken off his head to reveal his face which is facing slightly away from the camera, this could suggest his terror as he is avoiding something. The next caption 'sickest fantasies' reveals a lot about the plot, as this is when the audience realise that the man is going to experience inhuman suffering. A link could be made at this point with the idea of construction, as suggested by the man with the hose. This would then make the viewer wonder whether it is the terrified looking man which is going to be constructed on. There are then shots of tools, and more captions to show the events which are to take place will be truly disturbing, this also links in with the genre of horror as in most horror films there are specific weapons which are used against the victims in the films. There are many shots showing many different characters, some of which look like they are trying to espcape and some which look as though they are involved in the twisted events. This shows that, as with some horrors where there is usually one evil character, or monster, this film seems to break with conventions to a certain extent as there are a number of evil characters.