The Ring Opening Two Minutes Review

The Ring is a mainstream horror. In the first scene we are shown a house surrounded by nothing, this is a typical convention of a horror. When surrounded by nothing you expect something to happen or at least go wrong, as there would be nobody to come and help. It is thunder and lightning outside, it is also the evening therefore pitch black and this allows the audience to feel suspence, as at night the darkness creates an eery atmosphere. In the first minute of the ring the camera shot is a two shot. Where two characters are in a bedroom, they are two young girls. As they appear so early on in the film we expect these 'annoying teenage girls' also known as 'the dumb blonde one' to die first, and within the first two minutes the dumb blonde one does. Her friend tells her about a tape and that if you watch it the phone will ring to tell you, you only have seven days to live. We immediatley know from that moment we assume that the dumb blonde has watched it. Then the phone rings, the music changes to a slow pace creating suspence and with the audience now hoping that she will die, as she answers the phone it is just her mother. Meanwhile, her friend has dissapeared and with things seeming more and more creepy, camera shots such as extreme close ups and medium shots are used to show her facial expressions. Calling out to her friend, she is now no where to be seen. The audience now definatley are expecting a death and are going to be in for a treat as after a short three minutes she is dead. We can only assume that these first scene deaths are put in to engross the audience into keep watching the movie. If the opening scene resembled normal life, then we would get bored and turn it off to watch something else, that is why most horror films included those insignificant teenage characters to die first.