Research Into Similar Films

Submarine 2010

15-year-old Oliver Tate has two objectives: To lose his virginity before his next birthday, and to extinguish the flame between his mother and an ex-lover who has resurfaced in her life.

Submarine is similar to our film in the sense that it has a male, teenage protagonist similar to the one in our film. I like the opening sequence of the film because it features a lot of establishing shots and despite not being of the horror genre the scenes look slightly creepy, for example one scene is of a skeleton in Oliver's room and then cuts to Oliver sat in the corner of his room looking depressed. Other scenes feature water which is what our film is based around and they also establish the location of the film which is what we have planned to do in our film. I particularly like the Submarine logo against the blue waves in the background and I plan to have our logo looking similar to the one shown at 1:40, however I feel we should change the colour of the font to red which has more connotations of danger and death.

Halloween 1978

Exactly 16 years after he gets arrested and moved to a bedlam because of murdering her sister on the Halloween night, a demented young man escapes from the asylum and runs into a young, shy girl's family Halloween party.


Halloween is similar to our film in the sense that it is the same genre of our film (horror) and also features a lot of low key lighting. The colours present within the film are predominantly reds and blacks which connote danger and death and therefore make the audience feel more tense and more likely to feel scared. 
We could take the use of colours from the film Halloween in order to make our film seem scary and nervy. 

Eden Lake 2008

Refusing to let anything spoil their romantic weekend break, a young couple confront a gang of loutish youths with terrifyingly brutal consequences.

Eden Lake is similar to our film in the sense that is uses similar settings which are the forests and a lake. Our film 'Rising Waves' begins at a tranquil lake and then our protagonist Chris is shown running through a forest to escape something that is in the water. A lot of the scenes feature muddied characters who are trying to escape the bunch of teenagers who are terrorising the couple. We could incorporate the mud and blood combination in our film to express how desperate our character is to escape from the lake at the start of the film. I believe using this will make the audience see our film as more life-like and realistic and therefore they will 
be more engrossed in our film and more likely to be scared. 

The Shining 1980

A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where an evil and spiritual presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from the past and of the future.

The Shining is similar to our film because it is a psychological horror film which features a man who become increasingly insane when he starts his maintenance job. This relates to our film because ours features a male character who gradually becomes more mentally unstable to the point where he believes there is something in the water. The start of the film The Shining features a piano-like soundtrack which gradually increases in loudness which builds up the feeling of tension. We will try and use similar music at the start of our film because I believe that type of music engages the audience and builds a sense of tension.