Horror and mystery mold perfectly together in the pilot episode of the show Supernatural. Supernatural is directed by David Nutter and from what I have seen in the first episode is a very well made and excellently directed show. The main characters in this episode are two brothers, Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki), and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles). The first episode was released September 13th 2005. One of the things this episode uses very well to create a sense of horror, besides just using the paranormal activity is the sense of mystery throughout the episode, it helps to create a “creep factor”.
We start off by seeing Sam and Dean as children. Sam is a baby and Dean is a young child. This is when their lives change forever. We start to see strange things happen in Sam’s room while he is laying in his crib. Lights start flickering, the clock stops, and things in his room start to move, all things we tend to associate with paranormal activity. When Sam’s father goes to check on Sam, he looks up to see his wife Mary somehow on the ceiling, she is bleeding and bursting into flames. The flames are intense and dark, it almost looks like the gates of hell. The father gets Sam and Dean out of the house without truly knowing what has actually happened.
Jumping roughly 20 years into the future, Sam is at Stanford University, about to go to law school. Viewers are given the rightful impression that he has grown up to be a normal, intelligent adult. Dean shows up to tell him that their father is missing from a “hunting trip”. We find out that their father has become a “hunter”, someone who hunts ghosts, monsters, and paranormal entities. We also learn that Sam and Dean grew up learning to be hunters. Sam says “when I told Dad I was scared of what was in my closet, he handed me a .45”. Statements such as this are present throughout the episode to give us some type of backstory about how Sam and Dean grew up while still keeping it somewhat of a mystery. One of the biggest mysteries in this episode is the event at the beginning. We never find out what exactly killed or took their mother. Sam refers to it as “the thing” that took their mother.
In order to find their father they go to the motel that he was staying at and when they get there they find all of the leads that are in the room about the case that their father was working on when he disappeared. They find that there have been a lot of men disappearing along the same stretch of highway, and they decide to do some research about the stretch. They find out that a woman had discovered that her husband was unfaithful and she went crazy and killed her kids in her house and then jumped off a bridge on that highway about twenty years ago. They locate this ghost and she tries to kill them by taking control of their car.
Because they used fake credit cards Dean ends up getting picked up by the police and this leaves Sam to go and try to stop the ghost by himself. When he gets to the house where the ghost had drowned her kids she gets in the car and locks Sam in and says that she “can never go home”. We don’t know what she means by this yet. Then she starts to kill Sam, we see him start to bleed and he starts to yell in pain. Then he realizes that he has to bring the ghost into the house so he drives the car into the house. There the ghost is confronted by the ghost of her two children, and they appear in front of her and they both hug her. The ghosts burst into flames and are gone. Dean had escaped police custody and finds Sam at the house. Sam reminds Dean that he has to be back for his law school meeting, and then they get into the car and leave.
One of the great techniques used within this episode is the sense of mystery combined with the horror to create a creepy yet riveting show. It is creepy due to the fact that they are hunting monsters and ghosts. I would recommend this show to anyone, it can be a little scary to some people but it is an amazing show and I can’t wait to continue it.
Chris' House of Horrors 