Film opening analysis 3: Insidious

Director: James Wan

Writer: Leigh Whannell

Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery

Budget: $1,500,000 (estimated)

Rotten Tomatoes: 66%

"A family looks to prevent evil spirits from trapping their comatose child in a realm called The Further." -IMDb

Title
The font colour used for the film production company, main actor's names, director, are in a scary, red font. 
The titles start in red, and look very harsh and unfriendly. The words then fade upwards. They then fade into a pale blue cloud/smoke and then fade to black letter by letter, which gives a scary and ghostly feel to the opening sequence.
The font strongly links to the conventions of a horror film and gives the audience a sense that it's a ghostly film.
When the actual title of the movie appears, it is in a red font again. The tops and bottoms of most of the letters are pointed to look like horns. This adds a demonic feeling to the film. The title flickers as though there is a fire underneath it and there are shadows behind it. This links to hell and devils and horror in general.

Semiotics
The lighting in this film opening is very low-key. The whole sequence is pretty dark, again linking back to the genre. There are a lot of ghostly figures/shadows that can be seen. A woman is seen holding a candle, she looks as if she is wearing a dark veil and dark old-fashioned clothing, suggesting she is evil. 
There is a grandfather clock that appears a few times, this shows it's significance, or the significance of time itself in the film
In terms of editing, most of the scenes fade in and out from black, which make it very mysterious looking. 
There is non-diegetic music at the beginning of the opening which is almost a ringing, echoing sound.  When the shadow is first seen, we hear a violin playing fast and this creates a large sense of unease.

Narrative Exposition
The main theory that can be applied to this film opening is Barthe's narrative enigma theory. There are many questions that can be asked about the film opening. These unresolved questions create a sense of unease and fear, but also the curiosity that makes the audience want to keep watching, in order to discover the answer to these questions.