ZooScope

Tag: Animal symbolism

  • Hoodwinked!. Dir. Edwards, Cory. Kanbar Entertainment, Blue Yonder Films. 2005.

    Hoodwinked!. Dir. Edwards, Cory. Kanbar Entertainment, Blue Yonder Films. 2005.

    A retelling of the folktake Little Red Riding Hood as a police procedural, using backstories to show multiple characters’ points of view.[1] Hoodwinked! follows the classic who dunnit trope, deconstructing the fable of Little Red Riding Hood with a modern twist to narrate the mystery of the Goody bandit. It entertains basic animal stereotypes to translate the…

  • Batman Begins. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros. 2005.

    Why does Batman dress like a bat? In the words of Batman himself, “bats frighten me. It’s time my enemies shared my dread.” In Batman Begins, the boundaries between human and animal are psychologically breached through Bruce’s lifelong phobia of bats. This all-consuming dread leads to Bruce’s attempt to confront this fear through exposure therapy.…

  • The Craft. Dir. Andrew Fleming. Columbia Pictures. 1996.

    ‘Big animals steal from little ones’ – Bonnie Harper (Neve Campbell) The Craft (1996) epitomises the intensity of teenage female friendships, and how quickly and violently these bonds can be broken. This kind of teenage sisterhood and its potential for moments of both great beauty and disaster is played out through the use of animals…

  • The Craft. Dir. Andrew Fleming. Columbia Pictures. 1996.

    The Craft is a 1996 supernatural teen horror film, in which animals feature heavily as a representation of the otherness felt by four teenage girls who possess extraordinary powers. The film presents witchcraft and magic as something that is inextricable from nature and animals, in line with Neo-Pagan traditions. This scene is particularly striking, as…

  • Midsommar. Dir. Ari Aster. A24 Films. 2019

    – ‘So are we just going to ignore the bear then?’ – ‘It’s a bear.’ This sequence focalises through the eyes of the newcomers in unfamiliar territory and instills a sense of foreboding and uncomfortable mystery into the film through the conspicuous image of a caged bear. The questions brought about by the bear’s filmic…