Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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to Alice’s perspective during the climax. Alice discovers Bill’s dead body as she is
looking for him, and Brenda’s body is thrown through the cabin window in order to
frighten Alice. This is designed to increase the sense of danger that both Alice and
the viewer experience. Ned’s body, however, is never discovered by any characters
in the film. As Jack and Marcie have sex, they are shown in medium profile. If it
were an eye/camera shot, Jack and Marcie would be able to see the character it
inhabits, but as they do not interact with the camera, especially in such an intimate
moment, it can be read as an omniscient shot. There is no musical score
accompanying the sequence, just the sound of the rain and thunder outside the cabin,
heavy breathing, and Marcie’s high moans. The camera then cranes upward to the
bunk above them, where Ned is shown with his throat slashed and bloody in close
up, without any changes to the sound of the sequence. No character discovers Ned’s
body at any point, and his corpse is shown solely for the benefit of the viewer, for
both grotesque spectacle as well as to create tension surrounding Jack and Marcie’s
lack of knowledge of the danger they are in. The absence of music also foregrounds
the fact that this sequence lacks character perspective and directly engages the
experience of the viewer in the narrative, making this sequence particularly unique
within the film. The girl counsellor’s death, by contrast to the other unseen death
sequences, communicates the perspective of the aggressor. Aside from the firmly
situated eye/camera shot with no other shots edited into the sequence once she
becomes the focus of the aggressor, the volume of her voice increases based on her
proximity to the eye/camera, producing an aural connection to the aggressor as well.
The sequence ends with a freeze frame and enlargement of the girl counsellor’s face,
visually focusing on the fear of the victim as opposed to the bodily mutilation of the
victim.