Textual Analysis of I Am Number 4 (First Draft)

I Am Number Four is supposed to be an action sci-fi film, but the opening of it is very different to the rest of the film, as it has some conventions of a horror film in it.

The film I Am Number Four starts off with the camera rushing through a jungle and then pans up and over the trees, showing off the vast jungle, when the camera comes to a stop, a loud animal like screech is heard, this connotes that the camera may have been a first person shot of the animal or whatever the noise came from. It then cuts to a long shot of a wooden hut within the jungle as the screech echoes and fades out.

The horror aspects of the opening come in after the camera cuts into the hut, as it pans round inside the house, showing a slightly dirty inside with two people lying down. The music in the background is high pitched and fades out as one of the people wake, and acknowledge the screech from the animal. The music in the background is once again high pitched, with some low pitches notes added as the person picks up a futuristic dagger and sneaks towards the door. The music builds up with more and more sounds added in and the volume increases in the mix as he goes to the door and starts to open it. The tense music and the dark atmosphere in screen makes the audience feel on edge because they will think that it is building up to some sort of jumpscare, which never happens as the music cuts out and fades away when he opens the door, revealing nothing but the jungle. The audience will settle down and feel less uneasy when the music fades as it indicates to them that there is no danger in the film, but as this happens, a black wing crashes through the wooden wall and grabs the man and pulls him out through the hole as loud music picks up, this was done to jumpscare the audience as they were not expecting anything to happen. After the man has been taken through the wall, the music stays loud and slowly builds up to a climax in which the other person is looking around for danger, the music gets to the climax when the person was also taken and inevitably killed.

This part of the opening has conventions of a horror film as the dark room and creepy atmosphere is something usually found in a horror film. The music used is also high pitched at some points and has music that slowly builds up in volume and intensity and leads to a climax in which something happens, or is purposely delayed, like the wing grabbing the first man in the opening to I Am Number Four.

The opening of the film then changes dramatically as when the music from the jungle has faded out, it cuts to a beach in Florida, with lots of people having a beach party, as the camera follows one person, who is the protagonist of the film, the music in the background is upbeat party music which connotes a very different feeling to the other part of the opening. The opening then cuts till night as the party is still going on. The main character goes swimming in the sea with a girl, music starts to pick up again as the protagonist feels a pain in his leg. The camera then cuts underwater to show his leg, with two strange symbols protruding from his leg, they light up as the music in the background starts to pick up again with a dramatic tone to it. The camera then cuts up again to over the water from the beach and shows the protagonist struggling in the water as the light from his leg shoots out of the water. It then cuts to under the water again as a third strange symbol engraves itself onto his leg, showing that the person that was killed before was significant in some way, which means he was ‘Number 3’ as the story follows ‘Number 4’