Within the first thirteen minutes of the film there is a long drawn out scene that lasts for four minutes. This scene tries to add tension, and set a tone for the film. Unfortunately, without any context as to why their should be tension, the scene just drags on. Which is woefully counterproductive to the emotional response intended by the scene. The film provides evidence that there was a past traumatic incident, and these characters have recently moved. These events aren't shown to have any relation to their current situation, and doesn't provide any context as to why they're in danger.
The scene: a character finds their front door open when returning to their house after rushing out into their yard. The character is terrified, grabs a knife from their kitchen, and then slowly walks into every room of their house. They check every corner, and the camera follows this character throughout the scene. While another character jumps into frame making a sudden sound, trying to provide jump scares multiple times during this prolonged scene too.
The problem is this scene accounts for a third of the current run time of the film up to this point. All this run time devoted to a door that wasn't properly shut in haste. Adding creepy music and numerous jump scares do little to provide dread when the audience has no idea why a character is behaving this way. At the end of the scene we see a brief shadow before an edit cuts away, suggesting something is amiss. Too little, too late.
I counted ten jump scares in the first thirteen minutes of the film. All without providing any context as to why the audience should be scared at all. The film doesn't get any better after this unfortunately. Having an insufferable child character doesn't do the film any favours in winning over the audience to continue watching either.
The scene: a character finds their front door open when returning to their house after rushing out into their yard. The character is terrified, grabs a knife from their kitchen, and then slowly walks into every room of their house. They check every corner, and the camera follows this character throughout the scene. While another character jumps into frame making a sudden sound, trying to provide jump scares multiple times during this prolonged scene too.
The problem is this scene accounts for a third of the current run time of the film up to this point. All this run time devoted to a door that wasn't properly shut in haste. Adding creepy music and numerous jump scares do little to provide dread when the audience has no idea why a character is behaving this way. At the end of the scene we see a brief shadow before an edit cuts away, suggesting something is amiss. Too little, too late.
I counted ten jump scares in the first thirteen minutes of the film. All without providing any context as to why the audience should be scared at all. The film doesn't get any better after this unfortunately. Having an insufferable child character doesn't do the film any favours in winning over the audience to continue watching either.