Trailer :
This thriller starts with a heavy heartbeat as it brings in the opening credits and images of companies involved in the movie. The heartbeat is used to fill the blank space in the video; by this I mean if the video was just an image of the “Bad Robot” icon it wouldn’t have the right feel and wouldn’t get the audience in the mood to watch a thriller.
When the movie starts up there is a recording beep and a colourful screen (often seen at the end or beginning of a tape) it shows the date and how long the tape has been running for. The beep pauses, then the screen turns black. When the beep re starts the screen has changed and there is a title saying “U.S Department of defence” and a faint title in the background warning. “property of the US Government, do not duplicate” This makes the viewer feel important and that they are being let in on a big secret. The titles continue on to tell of how this video footage was found in “area B3S64 formally known as central park”
Now is when we see the film footage, the movie starts rather slow with a man filming around the flat him and his girlfriend are staying in, he looks out the large sky scraper window down on New York City below, this makes the people seem small and weak in comparison to the tall buildings that surround them.
The editing is the most basic it can get, the idea is that the tape was found in a wreckage of some disaster and was completely un edit and stored on a US Military database, the film does this well and it adds a tense effect where by it is constantly flashing from different shots depending on when they were recorded. This means the action in the film can be nicely split up all because that’s how it appears on the tape.
As the film builds up and the character is filming a leaving party and people leaving messages for “Rob” who is leaving to Japan soon. But as you watch you cant help but think something has to go wrong and this is built up by the noises used during the party and the sense that everything is just too perfect.
The two main male characters retreat to the stairwell and as they are talking about life and women who they love there is suddenly a power serge and the camera shakes and looks over the city, the skyline flashes as it looses power, this represents in a sense what the movie is about. The human world loosing its control.
The tension is built up after this thanks to the constant questioning and everyone shouting in miss understanding. The TV adds to this as even the news doesn’t know what it is, first reporting it as an earthquake but when the group head to the roof and look over the sky line they see a huge explosion, this is where the hand held camera really comes into its own, debris and fireballs take over the sky and everyone runs for the stairs. The chaos continues and the image starts glitching and we only see a few split seconds at a time. The whole scene is madness with voices and people screaming as they reach the ground floor and look down the street at the plooms of smoke and yet more explosions. Suddenly a huge structure is blown from the skyline, it comes flying down the road and the cameraman franticly runs to the side of the road to avoid it. The structure is the head of the statue of liberty and this is recognized across the whole globe of a very significant structure which makes it very shocking for viewers to see. All of this is accompanied by someone close to the camera man constantly shouting “Oh my God! Oh my God!” and the cameraman breathing in very heavily.
Over all this thriller starts slowly but works its way up and gets the atmosphere going until finally it all blows over with fantastic visual effects and all around digital excellence.
