Woman In Black Opening Scene Analysis

        In the opening scene, we see three little girls, presumably sisters playing with their dolls in their bedroom. The bedroom is very spacious and wooden and it looks very old and by what the girls are wearing old fashioned dresses which shows there a rich, Victorian family. There are close ups on the dolls as they pretend to give them tea and are just playing like normal children do. Then theres a high angle shot of the three of them and one by one they all turn round and face the camera, giving the impression the audience is getting the point of view perspective of whoever their looking at. The music goes really creepy and mysterious like somethings going to happen and theres a shot of all the girls looking towards the window, then the camera zooms in on it to show their being pointed to go over there. There's a close up of one of the girls dropping a mug and it smashing showing the audience something is not right, then we see another girl step on a teacup then another one step on a dolls head. There's then a shot of the girls all walking up to the window in sync and opening the windows, with a match on action of one of the girls pulling the door handle. By this point the audience knows whats going to happen and they all jump out and it goes silent, until we hear the screams of the mother screaming 'my babies!' which is a moment that gives the audience shivers and goosebumps. The camera zooms out and just before the end of the scene we see a black veil which is obviously the woman in black.

We don't actually get to see the woman we presume to be the 'woman in black's face which surrounds her with a lot of mystery as we don't know anything about her identity. The audience understands clearly that she is the antagonist and the evil character of the film. The music in the opening sequence is very tense and creates a lot of suspense even when the girls are just playing normally, there is a piano playing very high notes gently but when the girls look up at the valed woman a church bell like noise begins to play. More notes start to get played and the tempo slowly picks up a bit as they begin to walk towards the window, and as soon as they open it the piano stops and an orchestra sound goes really loud as they jump out then it all stops. The last thing we hear is the mother screaming and then it fades out.