Film Opening 6: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Director: Marcus Nispel

Release Date: 17th of October 2003 (USA)

Actors: Jessica Biel, Jonathan Tucker, Andrew Bryniarski, Erica Leehrsen, Mike Vogel, Erik Balfour

Production Companies:  New Line Cinema, Focus Features, Platinum Dunes, Next Entertainment, Chainsaw Productions LLC

Genre: Horror

Budget: $9,200,000 (estimated)

Box Office Worldwide: $107,071,655


The movie begins with a very ominous and dark non-diegetic soundtrack, during the time that the idents are portrayed on screen. This non-diegetic music denotes the fact that the movie is a horror genre.

Followed by the idents, the movie starts out with a voice-over of a male voice who explains what the movie is going to be about. During the time, there is shown several clips in black and white of crime scenes. During several times that the male voice-over speaks about the different pieces of evidence the police had found, there is an audio bridge between what the audience sees on screen and what the male voice-over is saying.

“The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of 5 youths. It is all the more tragic in that they were young, but had they lived very, very long lives, they could not have expected, nor would they have wished to see as much of the mad and macabre as they were to see that day. For them, an idyllic summer afternoon became a nightmare. For over 30   years, the files collected dust in the cold-cases division of the Travis county police department. Over 1300 pieces of evidence were collected from the crime scene at the Hewitt residence. Yet none of the evidence was more compelling than the classified police footage of the crime-scene walk-through." 

When the male voice-over talks about the footage of the "crime-scene walk through", we see a pile of camera rolls and afterwards hear and see the entire walk through that was done by the police. 

The entire walk-through of the police officer connotes that none of the 5 young adults are going to survive and therefore again denoting the genre. After having seen this 3 minute introduction, we are taken back in time, where the 5 teenagers were still alive and we are following them throughout the movie. 

The audience is introduced to them by seeing a van with 5 teenagers in it. This denotes that these are our 5 main central portagonists. The one girl sitting in the front of the van is wearing a cow-boy hat, while singing to Sweet Home Alabama, which is a diegetic music that comes out of the radio. Furthemore, there are cornfields in the background.

The entire mise-en-scene of the cornfields, her costume with the cowboy hat and lastly also the diegetic sound of the song "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, connotes that the movie is set in Old Texas, Alabama.