Cinematography technique · used in 4 films
Moving the story into a remote house, forest or landscape where no help can arrive. The quiet surroundings stop being a refuge and add to the dread.
Examples
Elem Klimov · 1985
The Belarusian forest is where the partisans hide and where Flyora finds Glasha. At times, it's almost unbearably beautiful. Nevertheless, it's also where bodies turn up, where German forces advance and where safety disappears without warning. The beauty and the horror sit side by side and never settle. No place is safe.
Where to see it: The bog sequence. The forest offers no escape. Beauty and terror share the same space at the same moment.
Roman Polanski · 2017
Part of the film leaves the city for the countryside, where part of it was shot in the Perche region. Far from anyone else, the two women have only each other.
Where to see it: The country house: The story moves to a house in the countryside, away from Delphine's city life.
M. Night Shyamalan · 2017
The girls are held in an underground lair, and their attempts at escape through a vent, a chair attack and a walkie-talkie all fail. The setting itself seems to hold them, because no help can find them there.
Where to see it: The lair: The girls are kept in rooms deep underground, which turn out to be beneath the Philadelphia Zoo.
Jennifer Kent · 2018
The bush is far from any town, with no law and no one to hear a cry. The soldiers and the land are equally hostile. When the tracker Charlie leads the soldiers into a dead end on a mountain, the place itself feels like a trap.
Where to see it: The dead end on the mountain. Charlie leads the party into a dead end, and Ruse kills him.
Questions