More on Narrative

Unrestricted Narrative

Unrestricted narrative is when the audience know more and see more than the characters themselves.

In horror movies, the audience will usually know more than the victim. For example, we will know when someone is standing behind the victim and what they are about to do to them due to the weapon they are holding.

They want to give the audience some hints as to what is going on by giving them a backstory. This will engage the audience as they feel like if they know more than the character, it gives them a sense of dominance

To help/hint to the audience, titles will usually pop up just to give brief information to help them understand more. This also gives them

more information than the characters.

Restricted Narrative

Restricted narrative is when not too much is revealed to also keep the audience wanting to watch more.

In horror movies, they use restricted narrative as they want to give the audience some enigma codes so they can figure things out for themselves. However, some enigmas are never solved and this keeps the audience wondering about alternative

endings if it had been solved.

The ConjuringIn this trailer, we can see that

the character is trying to figure out where the evil spirit is,

where it came from and why it's haunting that particular

house. All of these are enigma codes which will make the

audience want to watch the whole film.

How are enigma codes created?

One way enigma codes are created is by using fast pace editing. This is so that the audience won't have time to fully absorb everything, so it leaves them wondering what

happened.

Use of flashbacks could also raise a lot of questions amongst audiences. This is because although background information is given through them, they want to know how it has

affected their lives in the present.

Props could also create enigma codes. For example, if it’s a very important item, the audience would want to know where it came from and why it is so important.

The audience would expect these types of enigma codes from the horror genre as it is quite an in depth genre with a lot of thought put into it.