Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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sees a rabbit hopping in the woods behind him. Although he is actively searching
during this shot, this is the point where the eye/camera begins to firmly inhabit the
victims, although he is not killed immediately. This sequence is followed by
Vinnie’s death, where we see from his eye/camera as the killer shoves a road flare
into his mouth.
Until the climax of the film, all of the eye/camera shots are victim orientated.
Lana’s eye/camera appears first as she sees the killer’s feet appear behind the car
door, and again as a hatchet swings toward her. The spectator sees the eye/camera of
Raymond as he watches Tina and Eddie have sex in the forest. Tina’s eye/camera is
shown as she looks at the trees while she is lying on the blanket, and then again as
the garden shears are plunged into her eyes, followed by Eddie’s eye/camera as he
approaches Tina’s nude body, thinking she is resting, before he is killed. Junior’s
and Ethel’s deaths are both shown through eye/camera shots. Robin’s eye/camera is
seen as she turns over in bed to find Jake’s dead body before she is herself killed.
These eye/camera shots of the victims provide a direct contrast in technique to the
same effect to those in Friday the 13 th : the eye/camera inhabits the victims instead of
the killer, but in both cases they perform the function of hiding the killer’s identity.
The eye/camera shots of victims in A New Beginning focus on the impending death
blow instead of the identity of the attacker. The immediacy and close proximity of
whatever weapon is used also creates a directly visceral interaction between the film
text and the viewer.
The final two eye/camera shots that take place in the climax move away from
the film’s tendency to use the eye/camera of the victims. After ‘Jason’ (who is
actually Roy the paramedic in a noticeably different hockey mask) begins attacking
Pam and Reggie in the barn, Pam discovers and advances on him with a chain saw.