Godsend (2004)

Hamm presents Godsend in a way that involves the audience in the emotional horror of the Duncans’ dilemma rather than using computers and optical effects to create artificial elements or creatures. “In terms of the vision of the movie, it is domestic, naturalistic, but at the same time quite twisted. We’re working in a situation where we’re not only relying on shocks to make people scared. Instead, we created an atmosphere, a story, and a situation in which anything at all could happen. That to me is frighteningly intense.”

For the cast of Godsend, working CGI-free was a hugely satisfying approach. These are top actors at the peak of their craft, and they are working with, and off of, eachother – not reacting to green screens and creatures that would be created later on in a remote computer environment. Hamm put his trust in the screenplay and in the cast rather than relying on effects to move an audience. The horror of this film comes from a sense of relationship to the characters, not from a series of effects and noise jumping out at the audience. Kinnear comments wryly, “This is not an ooga-booga movie.”

Unusual for the horror genre, much of Godsend plays out in the daytime, with most scenes brightly yet moodily lit. Hamm explains his visual approach to the film: “I think true psychological terror comes in daylight, in everyday surroundings, not buried in shadow,” says Hamm. “Certainly not all of Godsend could be considered ordinary but the root of it certainly is. In essence, it is the familiar made disturbing.” Director of Photography Kramer Morgenthau worked closely with Hamm and Production Designer Doug Kraner to create a visual language that could freely suit the movie from its periods of relative normality to the most moody and terrifying moments. “We felt the story was so fantastic that we needed to take a realistic approach to the overall photography in order to keep it believable,” says Morgenthau.

“Both Nick and I tend towards a more expressive, somewhat stylized approach, but, for the most part, we kept things grounded with a visual reality. For our palette, we referenced some of the works of landscape painter Andrew Wyeth, and also took from that a little of the sense of a slightly dark, expressionistic normality. We’re taking the audience emotionally into this placid yet eventually scary universe of the countryside where the Duncans have moved, mindful that the visuals should not telegraph just what is to come.”

A strong portion of the movie takes place within the visions that afflict Adam. For those sequences, Morgenthau made exceptions to the realistic style of the movie. Technical expertise bolstered his creativity as he employed a series of techniques to texture the movie’s look. He used more than a dozen different film stocks, selecting each for their specific qualities of color intensity; contrast, graininess, and resolution. Exaggerating these visual elements, he severely altered the way many of the sequences were processed by the lab, sometimes changing the chemistry altogether. For one visual theme he even altered the motor in the motion picture camera to throw the film slightly out of phase with the shutter. This caused a dramatic shrieking of the highlights on screen.

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