Task 3...

Cube 1997

Cube is a psychological, thriller/horror film, where a group of people are placed unwillingly into a cube, they don’t know how they got there or how to get out.

This scene includes the characters of Quentin, Worth, Holloway, Leaven & Kazan, in the cube.

As soon as we are started to be introduced to Kazan, we are unsure of who he is and what threat he holds to the group, as he fell out of the door in the ceiling of the cube.

We are then presented with a close up of his face, as if it is in pain, connoting that he is highly uncomfortable with his surroundings, followed by a medium shot of the other characters standing over, and looking at him. He then abruptly sits up, with a vacant expression. The way Kazan speaks is very abrupt and fact like, as if his statement is very important and needs to be said very clearly, this is followed by him banging his head against the wall, alarming the other characters as they do not understand why he is doing this. There is then a close up of just half of Kazan’s face as he his banging his head against the wall, connoting that he is not fully mentally stable, this shot dehumanises the character as he is not shown his full face, making the audiences seem uneasy and they cannot see all of him, so they rest of him remains a mystery.

The constant movement and fiddling with his fingers, is not something that a ‘normal’ person would do, and as he is not communicating properly with the rest of the characters, they automatically assume that he is ‘mentally handicapped’ showing how quick the everyday person is on labelling those around them, pushing him into a category, straight away making the audience think that he will be no help to them, which is one of the stereotypical views of someone with a mental illness.

Kazan continues to vastly moves his fingers, then when another character starts to climb the wall, he starts hitting his head connoting how frightened he may be, or this is his way of communicating to the other character not to do something. This shows that the horror genre portrays those with mental illness as not being able to communicate or associate appropriately with everyday people.