The Terminator & Sixth Sense

Watched up to 1:45

At the beginning of the clip we watched for The Terminator we see a que of people waiting behind a caged in area, this straight away shows a feeling of entrapment with no where to go, although the terminator himself just walks straight through and into the club effortlessly taking down any one who tries to get in his way. This gives the audience an insight into his strength and what damage he could possibly do. The camera movement for this scene firstly shows a tracking shot at eye level, following the terminators face. Whilst all of this is happening there is non-diegetic loud music playing in the club, the lyrics of this song say “you’ve got me burning”, “never let me go” and “I am your prisoner”. This particular song is played because the lyrics foreshadow the events that are about to occur. Furthermore it also matches the period of time. This movie is set in the 80’s and the music is from the era. The whole mise-en-scene also shows the 80’s theme through the use of costumes, hair, make up and setting. Although, the terminator is dressed entirely different, he wears big, dark baggy clothing. This is also part of the mise-en-scene as it is showing how different the terminator is to normal human beings. At the climax of this scene we are shown Sarah Connors point of view (through the use of camera shots). The terminator is pointing a gun at her with the red laser pointing at her face, from the red glare that is seen the audience get the impression, due to the colour that it signifies anger, danger or death.

Watched full clip

The scene we see from The Sixth Sense being by showing a traffic jam in the middle of a city, while seeing this we also hear the voice of a woman having a conversation. The camera pans in, on to a specific car which the audience then see is the car with woman who we hear the voice of. She’s talking to her son about what accident could possibly be blocking the road etc. The mise-en-scene so far displays an inner city suburb with very normal people doing day to day things. This is conventional of a thriller as it shows a realistic view on life which the audience can relate to. When the camera stopped panning it became a two shot using the golden mean, with the points of interest being the son and mother. The first thing we hear from the child is that he’s “ready to communicate” for a child of 7 years of age this seems like a strange way to communicate, especially with his mother. Cole (the child) then states that he sees a dead woman standing next to him, this bold statement is shown by the first camera movement, the camera has not changes position since the beginning of this scene. From the camera movement we also see the dead woman that Cole sees, this is from the protagonist’s point of view. Furthermore this is unconventional of a thriller as usually you would expect non-diegetic sound to begin to build tension. But there is just silence –the diegetic sound from people walking past and the cars around them. We are then shown mid shots of both Cole and his mother to show each of their reactions and emotions so the audience feel like they are on the same level as the characters and can feel emotive  and upset towards the both of them.

When comparing the two thrillers against one another, they show two entirely different perspectives on what conventional thrillers display. They both show a protagonist, with Sarah Connor (The Terminator) and Cole (The Sixth Sense). Both protagonists deal with death, Sarah’s being the fear of her own life, and Coles being dealing with the dead who he sees. Furthermore we can see that they both have some sort of adventure or quest. From the small clips we see, The Terminator shows the terminator on a mission to find Sarah Connor, her running from the terminator and Kyle Reese trying to kill the terminator in order to save Sarah. Yet in The Sixth Sense we begin to see the journey unravel with the emotional conversation of Cole opening up to his mother. And the journey is about Cole helping out the ghosts which cannot move over. Although both the movies demonstrate the common conventions of a thriller they are completely different.