Film report

Michael Igboka

Voice of God film report

This film is a psychological, supernatural, thriller about how human nature provokes us to abide by the will of authority figures, especially when the figure is intangible such the entity god. The film has themes of hatred, shown through how the damaged girl dealt with the hatred towards her situation and the hatred she had towards her step mother and despair that Sam felt towards her situation. The film also has a theme of loss of innocence because a girl who had never killed before murdered her step mother. Another theme is madness because the girl hears voices. The story is also similar to the story in the bible where God tells Abraham to kill his son just to test his faith in Genesis 22. The name Samuel is symbolic to the biblical figure Samuel who god called in the night. The film shows conventions of thriller through its dark lighting and decent from a normal situation into a very abnormal situation involving supernatural entity. However, it keeps he question of whether the God was actually a real entity talking to her or a figment of her imagination, similar to how people view God in the western modern world due to secularisation. This essay will be discussing the use of micro features, mainly Mise-en Scene and cinematography.

The cinematography in this film uses a lot of one shots at the beginning and progressively starts to do more shots in a scene and the shots also seem to become more close up. For example, it begins with the introduction of the character as she comes through the door and goes up the stairs all in one wide shot, but as we get into the story and learn about the character the shots start to get closer and closer to her eyes and face and there are more transitions from shot too shot. The opening wide shot suggests that Samuel on the surface is a very normal looking teenage girl, as she’s in uniform, although during the bird eye view shot of her laying on her bed and the voice comes in and says “Why are you sad my child” the camera start to get closer and closer to her face symbolising the audience getting closer to the character for them to see that she’s an abnormal girl, because she hears voices.

Furthermore, the films progressive increase in shot changes and transitions the character is symbolic of the character’s emotion of fear and panic. As in the murder scene the shots there are a lot fade to black highlighting the panic she felt as she killed her step mother. This was done purposefully to reinforce that the character hasn’t killed anyone before and was legally innocent before that night.

The Mise-en scene in her room shows a large amount of white (the wall, her cloths and her furniture), which is symbolic of her innocence. However, the main symbol of her innocence is her hands. Her hands are constantly shown in the camera frame throughout the film, and when they are shown they aren’t shaking and they are clean. At the point when the voice shouts at her and she runs of the bed, her hands begin to shake showing her innocence is decaying because that the point she decides she has to kill her mother, which is evident through the quote “Yes lord”, however her hands aren’t completely stained until after she kills her mother. The red is symbolic of danger showing the girl has gone from innocent to dangerous.

Furthermore, wall paper shows a bird in a cage, this symbolic of her feeling trapped due to her mental state and the voice she hears and the fact she believes that the voice is god when its only her imagination (the film shows that the voice isn’t god in the quote “Why does my lord ask why when he’s all knowing?” this shows it’s not god because God wouldn’t have asked “why”) shows that she has to do whatever this voice tells her  because this voice is her god and she can’t escape this voice similar to how a person cannot escape from god.

Ultimately this short film overly conveys its story and meaning through its use of dialogue but covertly shows it through micro features, such as its Cinematography for example its wide shot towards the start and increase in close ups as it goes on and its mise-en scene such as its use of white and Samuel’s hands to convey innocence. This movie directed by me has its weakness such as the continuity error of the blood already on the table when she puts the bloody statue down, and the poor camera quality due to lack of access to better lighting and equipment.