Week 25.43 - Socials Roundup - Spooktober!
20 Oct - 26 Oct 2025: KPop Demon Hunters, The Haunting of Hill House, Monsterland
Week 25.42 posts are spooky centric, including shots from The Haunting of Hill House (2018); KPop Demon Hunters (2025); Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989); and Monsterland (2020).
Kiki’s Delivery Service
Afraid she may be losing her ability to fly, Kiki tries and falls - when she lands with a thud, the whole screen shakes, as though the camera is jarred by her hitting the floor.
Miyazaki repeats the camera shudder when Kiki tries again.
More than merely a joke or sight gag, the jarring motion makes us sympathetically *feel* how Kiki's world is shaken when she hits the ground.
The Haunting of Hill House
Episode 10 "Silence Lay Steadily" uses camera movement, blocking, and a conspicuous martini glass in this scene to not-so-subtly suggest disorientation and death.
The bar scene opens with a match cut (Flanagan does love a match cut!) with Shirley in the same place finishing the same motion, so we know who Shirley is even though she starts with her back to us.
The camera’s literal focus, however, is on a Handsome Stranger at the bar, so we understand he’s important.
The focus quickly racks back to Shirley, before an offscreen ‘this is for you’ which leads into a closeup of a martini. When the scene cuts back to Shirley, she’s sitting at the bar. This establishes the martini glass as an object of interest, while the scene ‘jumping’ Shirley to the bar puts us as off-kilter as she is. (Flanagan also does also love a slightly disorienting cut!)
The bartender draws her — and our — attention back to Handsome Stranger, who cheers. So now the three important elements are well established: Shirley, Handsome Stranger, martini.
Motion brings us into the next shot and (though not crucial) the party platter Shirley was asking about being what opens the shot does tell us time has passed.
When we come back to the bar for the next, longer exchange, the previously-established glass is framed directly over Handsome Stranger before the motion of Handsome Stranger standing up catches our attention and his move motivates the camera. Even as the martini and Shirley remain in focus, the camera keeps Handsome Stranger roughly centred with the martini remaining superimposed over him.
There’s plenty of dialogue in the scene, but small details undergird what’s happening: flirtation, dropping inhibitions, etc. The martini isn’t merely a ‘any old prop’ — it draws our attention, subtly connects Shirley’s thoughts to Handsome Stranger, reminds us of Shirley’s current mental state while also connecting us to previous scenes through its resemblance the embalming fluids Shirley works with as a mortician.
The superimposition suggests not only inebriation leading to poor decisions, but connects Handsome Stranger to Shirley’s life, which is soaked in death.
KPop Demon Hunters
KPop Demon Hunters has a couple wonderful flights of fancy that only animation can pull off!
It also does a few 'basic' things really well - for example, with just two shots and a focus pull within four seconds, we're shown-not-told that Huntr/x is spying on the Saja Boys, that Jinu is aware of their presence, but they don't yet know Jinu knows they're there.
Monsterland
Episode 4 of this anthology series "New York, NY" uses a lot of visuals which need no explanation.
For example the angle and lighting make this ominous without any context required; a man looming over an altar boy, in a church, bathed in red, screams demonic stuff!
Meanwhile, another sequence of Stanley Price (Bill Camp) shows us an instantly recognisable Last Supper tableau, before turning the shot around and using a chandelier as a ‘crown of thorns’ imagery.
Stanley has been the persecuted, but become the devil, and the episode’s visuals don’t beat about the burning bush to show it.