Cinematography and Aesthetic Codes

"[Silent Hill] is set in everyday places - cafes and gas stations, schools and hospitals. The ordinariness and familiarity make it all the more disturbing when things turn nasty. In "An Introduction to the Modern American horror film" Robin Wood (1997) describes horror as involving "a simple and obvious basic formula … normality is threatened by the Monster" where normality, the monster and the frequently ambivalent relationship between the two, are all variables. Silent Hill fits Wood's horror formula.  Normality is threatened, trashed, by the monstrous... The innocent are imperiled. Hell has eviscerated the town's school and hospital. Harry has to rescue his daughter and oppose the evil haunting Silent Hill" [1][2]. 

This simple cinema formula can be found in many survival horrors where the normality is changed into something threatening. In Resident Evil Raccoon City is overrun by mindless zombies, in Dead Space the USG Ishimura spaceship is diseased with aliens. What was once normal and has been subverted via the use of aesthetic signs and mise-en-scene. 

Above shows a bathroom in Silent Hill. One is virtually normal. The same bathroom changes into something much more dark and threatening as the game progresses. What was normal is now chilling.

However for this subversion to work the player/character still has to occupy a moral stand point which will find the change frightening. In other words, the player must still be a force of good, battling against the evil monster which is threatening the game world. "Whatever players do in most horror-based games, they still have to occupy the position of an avatar of good. As a predetermined transcendent force, the moral occult is at work in the way these games channel the player through their labyrinths" (Tanya Krzywinska 2002) [3]. In most of the survival horrors I can think of, the protagonists are made good by the way the enemies and the environments are created. The player/character does not want to die in the game so they must fight to live on, leading them to be the sign of good. The enemies make themselves evil by attacking, the player is made good because they're trying to survive.

Isaac's blue spine is actually his health bar and his gun shows the ammo, all in-game.

The way Dead Space uses aesthetic codes to create an immersive create experience isn't just through the environment and characters however, it is how, much like other survival horrors, the game does not use a Head's Up Display on screen. Every menu apart from the pause menu is activated and used while still in-game, unlike in Resident Evil when you can pause the action to catch a breath while you heal yourself, Dead Space adds the danger that while you are fiddling in the inventory something can still sneak up and attack you. In addition to this the "health bar" and remaining ammo on your weapon are diegetic, as shown above. This heightens the loneliness of the character and amplifies the player-to-character relationship. We feel much more like we are Isaac and not just an someone watching and controlling an avatar. 

[1] Wood Robin, 1997, "An Introduction to the modern American horror film" (1984) Excerpt from Reading Popular Narrative; A Source Book Bob Ashley (ed.) London and Washington; Leicester University Press.

[2] Diane Carr, GameStudies.org: Play Dead: Genre and Affect in Silent Hill and Planescape Torment, retrieved on 18/05/2009

[3] Krzywinska Tanya, 2002,  "Hands-On Horror" ScreenPlay (eds Tanya Krzywinksa, Geoff King) London Wallflower Press