Analysis Of 'Nightmare on Elm Street' Trailer

 

The trailer begins with a smoky, mysteriously quiet, murky setting but the music that rapidly builds up denotes that there is an imminent interruption. As the music increases its pace, the tension builds up along with it. The use of the fire in the opening part of the trailer connotes jeopardy and destruction, which links to the storyline. Freddie Krueger is a paedophile that works in a school - a danger to children - and the parents of the victimized children set fire to him as punishment, subsequently he dies but comes back to haunt the children's dreams. Destruction occurs in many forms in the trailer: visually to Freddie’s face, to the children's families and the children's dreams.

A drum sound is struck every couple of seconds and as this occurs the images appear quicker, building a lot of anxiety and uneasiness. Towards the middle and end of the trailer, there is the sound of children singing a slow song, counting numbers and this is traditional in horror films to be quite an eerie, unnerving effect. Another key thing in this trailer is that characters screaming are played during the trailer a grand total of nine times, signifying pain and torture, which is a common feature in horror films.

The visual text that is shown in this trailer is written in red against a black background. This is a typical gothic colour scheme - useful in a horror film, with the colours denoting anger, death and blood. The transition effects of this text are very sudden which links nicely with the fast-paced music and there are no happy scenes. All of these elements I believe conclude that this is potentially a very successful film.