This shot breaks the rhythm of the first two and immediately shifts the energy of the opening. Instead of staying inside the box or staying grounded, the camera jumps up into a top-down voyeuristic angle. It feels like we’re spying on the man without him knowing, which is exactly the uneasiness I wanted to introduce here.
One of the subtle but important things about these opening shots is the positioning of the box openings. In the first two, the inner edges of the box naturally guided the eye toward the television on the left side. In this shot, the lines of the box taper inward again, but now they lead you toward the TV on the right. That directional push is baked into the composition. Even before your brain registers what’s happening on the screen, your eyes are already sliding in that direction because of the physical shape of the box in the frame.
From this height you can see the back of the man’s head, and the perspective creates a strange feeling of superiority, like we have more power than he does. But at the same time, he doesn’t appear small. His entire body fills the left side of the frame, so even though the camera is above him, he still feels physically dominant in the space. That tension between superiority and proximity is what makes the shot feel uneasy. We’re high up, watching him from a safe angle, but his size still makes him feel like a threat.
This shot also shows how grimy the room actually is. The painterly look softens it, but you can still make out the dirt, the scattered trash on the floor, and the general decay of the environment. The setting already feels lived in and neglected before anything supernatural happens.
The television shifts again, glitching into a different image. This is the first time the screen moves from left to right across the sequence, which is intentionally jarring. We’ve been trained by the last two shots to look left, so forcing the eye to jump to the right adds to the unnatural feeling. The Burlap Friends doll sits to the right of the frame again, keeping that continuity going, as if these dolls are quietly observing everything.
The man lifts his bottle, sees that it’s empty, and then looks for a lighter after grabbing a cigarette. He doesn’t find it, which will matter later. As he stands up, the television changes and begins speaking to him. From this overhead perspective it almost feels like the room is corralling him into obedience. The sense of detachment makes the moment feel colder, like we’re watching a transformation begin from a place where he can’t sense us.
It’s a strange, uncomfortable shot, but that’s exactly why it works. It keeps the continuity of the room but distorts the logic the viewer has picked up from the previous shots. The box guides the eye, the man fills the frame, the dolls stand watch, and the environment reveals itself a little more. Everything is familiar and wrong at the same time, and that sets up the next section of the film perfectly.
Voyeuristic Overhead Composition
When I shifted into this top-down angle, I was consciously drawing from research on voyeuristic framing in horror cinema. Overhead shots create a psychological distance that is neither protective nor neutral. They put the viewer in a position similar to what Laura Mulvey describes when talking about the controlling gaze, except here it becomes an unsettling one. The audience watches from a place of unnatural omniscience. Films like Hereditary and Psycho use this angle to make the viewer feel complicit, almost like a silent intruder hovering above the scene. That is exactly what this shot achieves. We see the man from a godlike vantage point, yet the frame is tight enough that he still dominates the composition. The tension between dominance and surveillance makes the shot feel uneasy before anything actually happens.
Directional Guidance Through Set Geometry
The shifting directional pull inside the cardboard box comes from research into guided attention in animation layout. Studios like Disney and Ghibli use converging lines and inward tapering shapes to push the audience’s eye toward specific areas of the screen without them realising it. In this shot the edges of the box invert the rule established earlier, redirecting attention from a left anchored screen to a right anchored one. It becomes a small but intentional disruption. My research into perceptual framing showed me that when you establish a visual rule and break it immediately after, the viewer feels a moment of disorientation. Not confusion, but a soft psychological shock. That is the exact feeling I wanted when the TV jumps across the sequence.
Power Dynamics in High Angle Portraiture
I spent time studying how high angles affect perceived power in visual narratives. Portrait photography and film theory both agree that a top-down shot usually diminishes a subject, but there are exceptions when the subject almost fills the frame. In those cases the high angle creates symbolic dominance for the viewer, but physical dominance for the character. That contradiction generates unease because the brain is receiving two opposing signals at once. In your shot, the man feels spatially large even though he is being viewed from above. This relates to research on compositional contradiction in psychological thrillers, where a character’s power is made ambiguous through conflicting cues. The duality fits perfectly with the father’s role at this point in the film. The viewer hovers above him, but his presence still feels threatening.
Environmental Decay and Diegetic Texture
The grime and clutter becoming visible from this angle ties into research on environmental storytelling in horror. Production design often uses domestic decay to establish emotional backstory. I studied this in relation to films like The Babadook and The Witch, where neglect and disorder are positioned as narrative evidence of internal collapse. In this painterly version, the dirt is softened, but the implication remains. The environment now becomes a character. Its neglect mirrors the father’s decline, and the overhead angle reveals patterns of mess that a ground level shot would hide. This reinforces what I learned about diegetic texture, where the state of a room becomes a narrative tool rather than just a backdrop.
Screen Movement as Psychological Disruption
When the television switches position across the sequence, I am applying research on directional expectations in sequential imagery. In visual cognition studies, once the viewer has been trained to expect key visual information in one part of the frame, forcing their attention to jump triggers a brief fight-or-flight style response. It is tiny but measurable. In horror, even these micro disruptions accumulate. By shifting the TV from left to right, I am intentionally breaking the rhythm I built, and this aligns with my research into perceptual misalignment as a tool for tension building. The glitching itself references early experiments I studied when I was still considering analogue distortion as a primary aesthetic.
Symbolic Continuity of Domestic Objects
The reappearance of the Burlap Friends doll fits into my research on object permanence in horror environments. In The Conjuring and Coraline, recurring objects act as stabilisers in scenes designed to destabilise the viewer. They reinforce continuity while contributing to unease. Your dolls have that same function. They silently witness everything, and because they repeat from shot to shot, they bridge the viewer’s sense of familiarity while keeping an undercurrent of threat. This is supported by uncanny object theory, where passive figures gain emotional weight through repetition rather than action.
Behavioral Foreshadowing Through Mundane Gestures
The moment where the man checks the bottle, grabs a cigarette, searches for a lighter and fails lines up with research I did into micro gestures as narrative foreshadowing. In character psychology, mundane actions often reveal more truth than dramatic ones. I studied how actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman use tiny pauses or failed grabs to communicate internal conflict. Here, the father’s unsuccessful attempt to find the lighter sets up his dependency, his lack of control and the narrative importance the lighter will carry later. From this detached overhead perspective, the action feels observed rather than experienced, which adds to the coldness of the moment.
Overhead Detachment as Horror Mechanic
The reason this shot feels emotionally cold is linked to my research into omniscient framing. When the camera becomes an observer rather than a participant, the viewer feels like they are watching a system unfold rather than a person acting. This is used in films like It Follows where distance itself becomes a form of dread. The father looking up at the television from this angle makes it seem like the world is orchestrating him, not the other way around. The room becomes a trap, and the viewer is allowed to see the mechanics of influence that the character cannot.