The Omen opening sequence analysis

The Omen. The film starts off with a black screen, in the black screen credits appear in a white, bold text. This almost straight away gives a feel or horror, black and white aren't exactly the most cheerful colours. Non-Diegetic music plays, it is Devil-like and scary. Almost like a hymn, but Devil worshipping. A picture of a child appears on the right-hand side, while the credits still pop up on the left. The credits are in sync with the music to add affect and uneasiness. The music is loud and in your face, it's something we cannot escape from and our eyes keep glued to the screen.

The picture on the right is a picture of a child, either looking down at a crucifix like he is above God, or casting a shadow of a crucifix. He is surrounded by red, which represents blood or evil. The opening credits are very eerie. Very dark and mysterious, we can get an early sense of what the film is about. The black screen fades out to show a man rushing in his car. Fast pace camera cuts are used to show the rush and make it more tense. It isn't present day, as the vehicles, clothing and mise en scene suggest. It's night, and the man is speeding, that can't be a good thing, the audience will almost certainly pick up on this. We can hear the man talking to himself, I think it's in his head though, he is Italian. He says 'The child is dead'. He is Italian. Italy is the country where the Vatican is, lots of religious things are shown already in this film.

In white writing, the date is shown at the bottom. It's June 6th, 6am. I suppose it's 1966 too. Most people know that 666 represents the devil, this confirms the genre of the film. We jump to conclusions, 'the child is dead', 'June 6th, 6am' and the child above the crucifix at the start. The man gets out of his car and enters a building. He walks past two nuns, so he is possibly entering an old fashioned hospital. The man talks to another man about his wife. It seems that his child has died and he doesn't know what to say to her. A camera shot is taken from above the stairs looking down at the two men talking, asif someone is watching them. This is a common camera use in horror films and we feel slightly worried about what might happen to the man. The film has definitely been quite depressing so far. We know evil is lurking about, even though we have saw no form of evil.

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