Journal #2: Reviewing Films

All throughout watching the video on film analysis and reading the article on reviewing films, I couldn't help but think of my own endeavors in film reviewing. Now I'm not saying I'm a professional, and any newspaper that thinks I can do more than blabber endlessly about my personal life is sadly mistaken, but if I ever watch a movie and find myself uninterested in the content, I can't help but start dissecting it. Especially when it comes to horror films.

See, I'm a real movie-goer. I love watching the newest blockbusters and reviewing old classics, but horror films are my passion. There's just something about that adrenaline rush as your heart starts to pound and your mind begins to race that's positively addicting. But there's nothing more aggravating than reading reviews about horror films written by someone who doesn't understand how horror works. These people are becoming even more difficult to find as horror films fall to the wayside while gory thrillers take their place.

The Paranormal Activity films are a perfect example of this, as they are the first true horror films I've seen come out in a long time. They don't show you what's causing all the mayhem (until the third movie, sort of) and they condition the audience to be afraid at the right times.


That's what I love about film reviewing; realizing how movies have psychologically conditioned us to react in the proper ways to the situation at hand just by using effective music, camera angle, and even the coloring of the shot. We've been trained to react to movies the way we do, some more effectively than others.

Though the video I watched mentioned some aspects of film reviewing that I normally wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. I never like going into the social and cultural aspect of film reviewing because it involves making broad assumptions about both the audience and the directors and writers of the film. It's what I've always hated about writing essays on books as well. Who are we to assume what the author or director meant by putting a red rose next to a blue book on a shelf unless they tell us themselves? For all we know, it was just there to look pretty and balance out the green in the room so it didn't become an eyesore.

All I know now is that the next time I watch a movie, especially a bad one, I'm probably going to be sitting there captivated by what motivation every single camera angle has and I'll have no idea what's actually going on in the movie.