A Filmmaker's Guide to the Horror Themes Used in 'The Vatican Tapes'

(Note: This article will be using the film 'The Vatican Tapes' in order to analyse its themes so it is recommended that, to gain the best insight from this article, you watch the entire film at least once).

The Vatican Tapes is a highly underrated horror film and since we're here, we're going to discuss some of the techniques and themes used by this film to incur horror. These themes have been used specifically to insight horror and terror and have also been used to deceive the audience into its legitimacy. The main problem I've always had with this film, and it's only slight, is that it has a happy-ish ending.

Here are the themes then:

• Violence
• Religion
• Fear

Let's begin by going through the themes and looking at how the film portrays them in a way that would be appropriate to the horror genre.

Violence

Violence in the film is what I call "the prompt." It is how we as the audience know that there will be something bigger happening later on that includes either the person inflicting the violence or the person they are inflicting the violence upon. It is important that these two or more people know each other as that way, the violence is heightened into both a physical and an emotional attack.

Let's have a look at the film then:

Frame

In this frame we can clearly see the extent of the violence that has occurred and, to put the main character safely within that setting without real damage also shows us what the "prompt" is; it is the fact that there is a difference. The difference is between the characters that are lying upon the floor and the one standing safely in the middle because of the fact she has not been hurt like the others.

The prompt here shows us that the main character has some sort of difference, in an attempt to use this in your own film, I would try not to make it so obvious as this film did but instead—look at The Conjuring 1 to understand subtlety.

Religion

In The Vatican Tapes religion is a very important aspect of the authenticity of the film. The way in which the film is made to look as if it were an actual hiding by the church is done by the filming of the exorcism. This can especially be said about the beginning/opening scene of the film in which the ministers are watching the tapes back and happen to come across this one. Let's have a look at the film:

Frame

A perfect example of the use of authenticity to validate the religious theme in the film. Just pay attention to the way it is made to look like a video tape, the whole set-up is very focused on trying to make the viewer believe that the religious claims are true. Now, we could go through the part with the crucifixion but we won't because it's far too obvious what that is trying to tell us. Instead, the intent is what the religious theme is all about, and the intent is to make you believe that this is happening through the religious authentication.

If you were practicing this in your own film just remember, do not make it too obvious. This film, I fear gives us too much authenticity that it doesn't actually end up working—instead try to use these models and create your own method of working the intent of the religious theme into your film.

Fear

Fear is quite possibly one of the most important aspects of any horror film when this is projected on to the audience, but creating fear within the actual film is more difficult. You must, therefore, establish a connection between the characters and their fear by having it either happen to them or someone they know very well. This established connection will then reflect itself back on to the audience—a favourite of horror films is by normally using children to project it because most people get scared when a child is in danger. Let's have a look at how The Vatican Tapes does this:

Frame

The Vatican Tapes seems to like to project fear through close up. We have the close up in the car, the close up in the opening scene, the close up to the wound on her finger. There's many close ups to suggest that something bad is going to happen to this woman. When the bad things start to actually take place in the form of demonic possession, we see these same close ups over and over again. This is to make sure that the audience have established that connection between what was happening at the beginning of the film and say, this particular frame you see above.

If you are going to do this in your own project, you may want to use a similar method because it is so well known to horror film. If you look at any major horror film, they always use the relation between shots to establish a connection between the "prompt" and the true horror of the film. It is a wonderful unspoken rule of horror.

Conclusion

The Vatican Tapes may not be the greatest horror film in the world, but it has many things you can study in there. If you wanted to do some independent work on analysing the film, you could look at the following themes:

• Hospitals
• Accidents
• Normality vs Abnormality

Hopefully, this has started you off nice and easy into your own analyses and horror-watching. Good luck on your next project!