Shrooms is a thriller/horror film made in 2007. It's about a group of Americans who travel to Ireland to take magic mushrooms, but whilst there they are stalked by a serial killer. It's directed by Paddy Breathnach.Genre
Shrooms is a typical horror film, with a group of young teenagers in a forest and being picked off one by one. However, the opening is very similar to one you would find in a psychological thriller, as it has a shock factor and, unlike in a typical horror opening, has nothing to properly shock the viewer apart from a little bit of gore. The running away from an unseen killer is more in the thriller genre then it is in the horror one.
Sound
Starts with eerie non-diegetic music over the first credit.It then stops and changes to a more suspenseful tone and this makes the viewer on edge and eager to see what happens. It then has a non-diegetic sound of a girl running, and then the credits stop and it cuts to a forest where she is running, making the sound diegetic. The scene changes to a castle with non-diegetic foreboding music and you can hear screaming as images of blood inside the castle is shown. It then cuts back to the girl running through the forest with the same sound of the girl panting. It cuts again to inside of the castle with the same screaming noises as before, which we assume to be non-diegetic as there doesn't seem to be anyone living in the castle. We then hear the diegetic sound of breathing as we see someone moving around. Again, it cuts back to the girl running with the same sound as before. It then cuts back and forth between the girl and the castle, and over the diegetic sound we can also hear whispering which is non-diegetic and adds to the eeriness of the scene.
Editing
The opening credits fade onto the screen and fade out slowly, adding to the suspense already created by the sound. The cuts are very sudden, and when showing scenes inside the castle have a black gradient. This makes the viewer edgy as they cannot see the whole scene and don't know what exactly there may be around.
Camera
During the shots of the girl running, the camera shakes around to disorient the viewer and portray a sense of unease to the viewer. When showing shots of inside and around the castle, the camera has a black gradient around it, which makes it very mysterious as the viewer cannot see the whole shot. The speed of the camera panning also slows down between the castle scene and the girl running, and this adds to the viewers uneasiness as it confuses them.
Narrative
From the opening scene, we know that the girl who is running, is most probably running from the castle and we assume she is the protagonist, because she isn't killed in the opening scene.
Mis-en-scene
In the shots where the girl is running through the forest, the mist gives an eerie feel to the scene and the viewer. In the castle the blood on the floors and other objects in the castle add to the uneasy feeling the viewer has and the viewer tries to make links between completely different objects.
Target Audience
The target audience would mainly be teenagers, due to the fact that it's a group of young teenagers camping in a forest with some hallucinogens, which teenagers can relate to as either them or their friends have done something similar.
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