Research: Teaser trailer analysis: The Amityville Horror

The teaser opens with an institutionalised reference to MGM, immediately drawing in the audience as MGM is a well-established production company that already have an audience for their films.

As this fades, another reference to ‘dimension films’ appears, whilst simultaneously tense music is beginning to play, hinting at the genre of the teaser. With no visuals and quiet tense music, sudden foley effects of gun shots can be heard, increasing in the tension and grabbing the audiences attention.

There is a black and white shot of a policeman, in medium close up, recognisable by his clothes, hat and police badges, with a man to the right of him, holding a microphone to his mouth, conveying to the audience that he is a reporter. As the policeman says ‘I’ve never seen anything like it’, the audience are left wondering ‘seen what? What he is talking about?’, so they continue to watch the teaser. The shot cuts out much like a damaged video after the tape has spun out, fitting in with the conventions of horror films.

A intertitle reveals that the film is ‘Based on a true story’ which is also a frequent convention of horrors as they tend to treat the footage more like real archive footage rather than a constructed image. A woman can be heard, saying ‘tell us what you know about the murders’; her shrew, ruthless tone, conveying that she is a news reporter. The music all the meanwhile is building in tension.
There is quick paced editing, and a number of shots juxtaposed to reveal clues to the murder, all shots in black and white, giving connotations that this murder took place a long time ago.
A zoom in of the headline ‘Family slain in L.I home’, cross dissolved with a picture of a head investigator, picking up the key words ‘ in bed’ ‘shot’ ‘..and killed’, and intercut with images of the scene of the crime, tells the audience more about the murder.
The music is edited in order to fit in with the timing of the intercuts, which makes the teaser more frightening and builds an eery atmosphere.

A mans voice can then be heard stating ‘Isn’t is unusual to have six members of a family,on two separate floors, shot, and nobody moves from their beds’, accompanied by the text ‘November 13, 1974, Long Island, New York, 412 Ocean Avenue’. Here the audience have realised which murder the people in the teaser are referring to as it is a valid murder case, making the teaser even more frightening. More shots are quickly revealed, with electronic beats of music, much like the sound of video footage breaking up. Another reporter can be heard telling the audience the murderer ‘Ronald Joseph Defeo, Jr claimed he heard voices coming from within the house telling him to murder his family’. This is narrated over mug shots and articles of the murderer, adding to the fear as the story of a man murdering his own family is very disturbing and then seeing articles makes it feel even more real to audience as if we are transported back to when the killing happened.