Change Your Image
saronastirling
Reviews
Kitchen Sink (1989)
Clever in all ways
I study Kitchen Sink in my Media Studies class and only now I've actually come to appreciate the techniques Alison has used, me and...well...most of my class (there are a few who just don't care or pay attention) The lighting for one was very cleverly used.
There is the scene when the woman is thinking about the monster she just chucked in her bin. The light on one side of her face in the close-up scene was very cleverly done. One half of her face is in light, showing she could actually just leave the monster in her bin and forget, the other is shadowed in dark. Kind of foreshadowing her reversal decision where she actually takes the monster out of the bin. The dark side shows her desire and the path that could lead to the monster becoming alive.
The soundtrack too, is eerie and mysterious, like the monster who is eerie and mysterious, watching the movie with my class is possibly the only time they're all silent as the grave really. You can hear a pin drop apparently, it's quite lovely because usually they're just chatting like the teenage girls they are.
The woman changes from victim to aggressor during this film too. Alison has completely changed the way things, especially horror movies, were done in that time. The woman is usually the victim, and so she is in the beginning when she is frightened by this monster that she pulled out from her sink, but then after she makes the decision to chuck the monster in the bath, she turns into the aggressor when she shaves the man and designs how she would like him to look, she is in control of the situation and that's quite a change.