- There is a close up of a tap with water coming out. A little girl is in a bath tube singing ‘Incy Wincy Spider…’. There is long shot down a long dark corridor of the door to the bathroom, glowing around the edges due to the light emanating from behind the door. There is a series of cross cuts between the little girl, the tap and the corridor to build suspense. The long shot down the corridor appears to be handheld but without the jerkiness, showing that they’re slowing getting closer and closer to the door. These cross cuts continue, and we begin to notice that the water level is increasing rapidly. The girl continues to sing with the diegetic sound of the water from the tap, along with the non-diegetic background music to assist in building suspense. Using a medium close up from outside the bathroom we see the door slowly open to reveal the inside of the bathroom (steamed up mirror). The camera then shows inside the bathroom, focusing on the bottom of the door as we witness a shadow of a figure, suggesting that someone is about to enter. The girl moves to turn off the tap as the water level is really high, and there is a close up of her hand as she tries to turn the tap off. The music builds up as we see her struggle to turn off the tap. Meanwhile, the camera approaches closer to the closed curtain of the bath tub. There is then a cutaway as the camera turns to focus on the steamed up mirror, revealing a blurred black figure moving past. The tap begins to make strange noises and begins spurting out black liquid. The music builds up and becomes much more dramatic whilst we see the ‘figure’ edge closer to the bath curtain and we see a black glove reach out to pull back the curtain. Instead of seeing what’s behind the curtain, we hear a loud piercing scream as the camera returns back to the long dark corridor looking down to the slightly ajar bathroom door. The music stops and there is silence.
- Camera tracks a teenage girl on her way to the underground to catch her tube which she is late for. During the opening sequence we a completely deserted tube station. The lights are flickering and we see and hear the tube go past without stopping. But when the tube is gone, so is the girl.
- Set at night time in what appears to be a hospital. There is a patient who wakes up to find themselves handcuffed, lying in a hospital bed with no recollection of how they got there. The camera reveals various tools and syringes which have been used on this patient to suggest that someone has been testing on them. The patient uses the tools to release them from the handcuffs. The patient then draws back the curtain of what appears to be a hospital room, only to find that it isn’t a hospital room at all, but in fact a room inside someone’s house. They open the door to find themselves overlooking the garden of someone’s house.
- There is silence. Using a low angle shot, we see a clock on the wall which shows it is 12o’clock, and we hear the diegetic sound of a clock ticking. There is a synchronous diegetic sound of a music box being wound up as we see a cut away of a woman’s hand winding up a music box. We see the back of a 5-year old little girl with long dark brown hair is sitting on her bed, and the camera slowly pans and rotates around to reveal that she is drawing. Whilst the music box is playing, the little girl hums and sings along to the music. Similar to the beginning of this song:
As the music progresses, we see shots of the woman folding away little clothes into perfectly organised drawers of a very pinkly decorated bedroom. Then there is a long wide shot of the woman walking up some stairs. There is a close up of her feet as she is walking up the stairs, accompanied by the diegetic sound of footsteps. The humming of the girl slows down and becomes more feint as the woman draws closer to the top of the stairs. When she reaches the top, she closes the door behind her, carefully locking and bolting the door shot with loads of padlocks. The audience begin to get more suspicious because it appears that this ‘mother’ is locking her child in her room, which seems a strange concept. The camera then follows the woman into a dark/red room underneath the stairs where we see her developing some pictures. The camera only ever reveals the back or side-profile of her face, never her full face. This adds mystery to the sequence. The camera zooms in on a picture of the same little girl with long brown hair. The non-diegetic music in the background is getting more intense as we witness her pegging the photo onto a piece of string to dry. The camera then zooms out to reveal a whole room of pictures of this same girl, in different locations as if she has been stalked. We assume from this that the woman who appears to be her mum is in fact a stalker who has abducted this girl from her real family. We find out later on in the film that this same woman lost her own little girl years prior to kidnapping the other little girl, and we see her reasons for doing so.
An example of the eerie music that could be played in the background to this opening sequence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSs-00CiTzE
Here is a video I made which shows this idea in a more visual approach:
Here is a video I made which shows this idea in a more visual approach:
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