new vampire film synopsis

Premonition:



Sienna Collins is a born artist. She is always drawing at any free moment she can. However one day-when she is 15- she drew something she couldn't explain. She drew a picture of her friend crossing the road talking on the phone and a car coming her way. She doesn't see it is coming. Sienna hadn't realized until she drew it that she had. And it scares her even more when the drawing comes to life the next day. She tries to tell her self that it is a coincident but she doesn't truly believe it herself; until the present day.

She is not 18 and is home alone. She is listening to music on her phone when suddenly she gets the urge to draw again. She picks up her sketch book and pencil and draws. She doesn’t realize what she is drawing until she is done. She sees that she has drawn picture of her in the park with a man; whose teeth are sank in her neck. As soon as she sees this she gets a flashback of her friend’s accident and the drawing. Upon seeing the connecting she drops her pencil and quickly rubs out the drawing. A few weeks after that, she avoids the park. She thinks she is being ridiculous and goes to the park. She sits on a bench and gets carried away sketching again when she feels a slight breeze on her neck. She turns to where the breeze is coming from when she comes face to face with a man, and the next thing she knows is she's being bitten just like what happened in her sketch.
 

Iconography Analysis

Nesferatu:

This movie has a few vampire iconographies. We get a sense of horror when we see a shadow, with long creepy fingers walking slowly towards the room. Where there is a female victim. Women are often represented in vampire films as those who need saving, a damsel in distress, and that is exactly what we see about the girl. She is wearing a white night gown indicating she's about to sleep. It also shows her vulnerability and the white suggest innocence.

Dracula:

The vampire iconography used in this film is violence as shown by the war. When we see the opening of the clip, we see a cross being covered by dark fog, this gave us a sense that it was a vampire movie because we vampires are usually vulnerable when they see a cross. Furthermore we see that the women who is Dracula's wife is represented as a weak, love-sick woman due to the fact that she can't live without her husband as shown by the way she kills herself because she was given the impression that Dracula died in the war. 

Mini Essay of "xXx"

How does the title of "xXx" establish Zander as a rebellious hero?

The Opening of the film shows us the car of the senator which has a bumper sticker at the back that says "skateboarding is a crime". This immediately gives us the idea that this guy isn't the hero. This is further proved by the way he talks to the person taking his car. We could assume it’s just a random character; however the fact that we only get a mid-shot of the senator showing just the shirt of the hidden character could give us a hint that he is the hero. That changes when we see the close up of his wrist which is covered in tattoos, and then the camera proceeds to show us the extreme close up of the tattoo. The director chose to use an extreme up because this shot is mainly used to zoom in on a specific feature, which in this case if the tattoo "xXx". The director is trying to tell us from this shot that this is the main character.

When see the chasing scene where our main character Zander is telling the audience exactly why he is stealing the car. The mostly used in this scene is a close up/mid shot. These shots are used for conversations, thus the fact that he is videotaping his speech shows that he engaging with the people who will see this soon. Therefore he is doing this for the people making him a hero. Also the non-diegetic sound of the scene where he jumps off the bridge is very fast and upbeat and is the kind of music you would hear when someone does something heroic in the movie, this makes him seem the hero. However, when the car is off the bridge, it is put in slow motion, and is also a long shot. These two things show that the main character Zander is making sure the senator sees his beloved make its journey down slowly which would seem quite torturous for him. This makes him seem like a villain.  

Every movie consists of a hero and an evil person but Zander is quite unique. He seems to be both. He is voicing the wrongs of the senator and telling him that video games, rock music, and skateboarding are not crimes and that it is not "diminishing the intelligence of our youth". This makes him a hero of some sorts. Alternatively it makes him an bad person because of his ways of putting his point across which is also quite hypercritical because by doing the stunt and also filming is -making everybody including kids see it- is putting the message out that it’s okay to do such things, even when doing it for the public, ultimately making him rebellious.