Deconstruction of Insects, Maggots & Invertebrates in Films

In Squirm, the town's ground is infested with thousands of flesh eating worms because the electrical wires fell onto the ground which brought them to the surface. A mid shot is used to show us that the worms have claimed another victim; his stomach is half eaten by the worms. If we were to use worms in our project, it could be for the victim's bodies and how the killer has left them for so long that worms have burrowed into their skin.

In Drag Me To Hell, the old woman is following this girl and when the girl wakes up, the woman jumps on top of her and vomits maggots. Vomiting maggots is very unexpected and this frightens the audience, and makes the light-hearted feel sick. Low key lighting is used to highlight how it is in the middle of the night. An over the shoulder shot is used to make the audience feel involved and that they are there with the characters.

In Don't Let Him In, the killer killed a man while they were fishing then filled his mouth with the maggots they were using to catch fish. An extreme close up of his mouth is used to highlight these maggots and the blood on his face. Also, the extreme close up focuses our attention to his chapped pale blue skin because his body was left out in the cold weather.

In Candyman, the 'Candyman' was killed by his girlfriend's father by being stung to death by bees. He comes back as an urban legend when his name is chanted 5 times. When he opens his mouth, bees come flying out, and opening his coat, his abdomen has been eaten away by the bees. For our final project we would not include a 'spirit' of a victim as that is more supernatural, however, the idea of bees (or other forms of insects, invertebrates etc) eating away at a victim would be good as decaying & gruesome bodies is a slasher convention.

Overall, for our final project, we could include maggots as they are the most squeamish of invertebrates and, as we are doing a slasher, we would want our audience to feel that way. Putting them in the dead victim's mouth, as in Don't Let Him In, Candyman, and Drag Me To Hell, is the most disgusting so we could do that, or we could put them on the victim’s skin. This would also frighten the audience because the maggots could burrow in the skin which could harm the victim (if alive).

Victim's Bodies

 In Silence of the Lambs, the security guard has his abdomen ripped open and is hung from a cell  with his arms up and feet together. With the use of back lighting behind the victim and the way his body is positioned, the guard resembles a guardian angel. This is ironic - good (guard) vs bad (prisoner) and bad won and he positioned the guard as if to show the defeat of goodness.

In Don't Let Him In, the killer hacks off people's limbs and hangs them from a large tree in. The bodies are very bloody and muddy from where he ruthlessly killed them in his 'cave', and you can see their insides, like muscles and bones, which makes the bodies more realistic. For our project, we should make the victim's insides quite visible and graphic so to make the murder more realistic.

In The Crazies, one of the victims has his eyes and mouth stitched, however he is still alive. He tries to open them but his eyes start bleeding which makes this more gruesome and painful. In our project, the killer is cutting open pregnant women however, he will not be stitching them up, allowing them to bleed to death. If we were to change the story and make him stitch them, as in this film, we could use cotton thread and not medical stitches because everyone has cotton thread at home, but it is used for clothes not bodies so it would be more authentic.

In Mirrors, the mirror controls the victim into ripping open her jaw and sitting in the bath in order to bleed to death. You can see her skin ripping and tendons which makes it realistic - a slasher convention is to make victim's insides as accurate as possible so to make the murders look believable.