Dracula: Deep in the Horror Night

Do You Feel The Depth of Horror?

 -Slowly creeping around on screen like a snake. Never can be resistible. 

The slow dissolve transition skills in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Coppola, 1992) impact the moods of the next scene and cause the audience curiosity. Once the viewers feel curious, they are ready to get more concentrated and strongly engaged in the film without obstacles as it leads to the next scene with a long lasting dissolve technique.

The camera focuses on important items which represent symbols working as clues to let viewers imply what may happen later on. The scene starts with Jonathan leaving Mina. They say good-bye and peacock’s eyespot appears while they are kissing. The scene shows their pure love and how they truly care for each other.

The peacock’s eyespot leads to the scene of the train taking Jonathan Herker to Dracula’s castle. A peacock appears in the garden while Mina and Jonathan are kissing. This scene of peacock’s eyespot represents unsettlement and uncanny. This is because the symbol of peacock is immortality since the ancients believed that the peacock had flesh that did not decay after death. The scene switches from dark to light that could refer an adventure to a place where Jonathan has never been to. What’s more, as the train goes through the tunnel, it implies the image of the eye of needle.

The peacock’s eyespots fan slowly over the whole screen. The scene of the rolling peacock’s eyespots brings up a mysterious mood effectively so that viewers might feel curious about what may happen to Jonathan and Mina’s relationship. The scene clearly focuses on the last eyespot in the center of the screen that leads to a next scene. The sound in the background is slow and calm with the sound of a train whistle. The scene becomes mysterious and tense since the loud and vigorous sound of the train contrasts the soft background music. 

While Jonathan is reading the letter from Dracula, the shape of the clouds in the background look like eyes watching him. The scene of letter converts into the Mina’s photograph and Jonathan watches it for a while without knowing the situations they have to overcome. And then, it switches to Mina looking at the photo of Jonathan with a lovely smile as she is typing.  

The basic color of the train scene is the reddish orange of sunset. The sunset infers that the bright days are gone, and dark days are coming. This scene plays the role of a trigger for shifting the balance that Mina and Johnathan would face from happiness to misery.