Sound in Horror/Thriller Sequences

The two clips that I will be analysing sound from are A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Purge (2013). 

In an England of the future, Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his "Droogs" spend their nights getting high at the Korova Milkbar before embarking on "a little of the old ultra violence "while jauntily warbling singin' in the Rain." After he's jailed for bludgeoning the Cat Lady to death, Alex submits to behavior modification technique to earn his freedom; he's conditioned to abhor violence. Returned to the world defenseless, Alex becomes the victim of his prior victims. In this sequence there are all different types of sound that has been used, for example diegetic sound, non-diegetic sound, contrapuntal sound pleonastic sound. At the start of this sequence there is pleonastic sound when the man is typing on the typewriter, when the door bell rings and when the woman goes to answer the door, the footsteps are exaggerated, this makes the audience feel as if something is going to happen. There is then diegetic sound when they all charge in, shouting and when one of the people dressed in white kicks the man that was sitting at the typewriter. There is then more diegetic and pleonastic sound when, what seems to be, the leader blows his whistle. There is more diegetic sound and contrapuntal sound as when the leader starts singing it is quite a happy song ("Singin' in the rain) which contradicts the aggression that they are about to show whilst singing. There is more pleonastic sound as they destroy their property like when they flip the table and pull down the bookcase, all of this sound is diegetic sound. At the end, there is non-diegetic sound, the sound track that is played in the background.

The Purge is about one night a year, in the USA, all crime is legal. This includes murder, theft, the use of weapons and even destruction of property. In this film there is a gang who try and kill a specific target each year, this can be a group or one person on its own. In this film the gang are hunting a man who fought back and killed one of them, he then ran off shouting "help" "let me in". The this families house they have a lot of technology which keeps them safe each year. The child of this family heard the shouting from inside the house and came down unlocked the "lockdown system" and tells him to come this way. The father realises what he has done and closes the gates straight away, but there is enough time for the homeless man to get in. The gang find out that he got in and they ask the family to return him but their morals hit them, so they keep him inside. When they didn't return him in the amount of time they were given they decided to go against this family as well as the homeless man they have sheltered. At the start of this sequence there is diegetic sound between the two parents quietly talking, this makes the audience that they are hiding from something. There is then some pleonastic and more diegetic sound of the shuffling of the gun and the shouting of the head of the gang from outside. There is then more pleonastic sound as the gang leader reloads his gun ready to shoot. There is more pleonastic sound as the hang get "the beast" to charge and break down the front of the house to get in, along with the actually crashing and banging of "the beast" actually doing the damage. This is all diegetic sound along with the shouting of the parents saying to "RUN!" away from "the beast". when the parents hide there is pleonastic sound when the father is breathing heavily from running the moment before. There is then a sudden diegetic and pleonastic "BANG!" from the gun that has been fired and the glass that has shatter due to the bullet going through it. There is more pleonastic sound when the homeless man, who is strapped in a chair, try's to get out by shaking and hitting the floor. More pleonastic sound is played when one of the gang members fire their gun multiple times and when more glass is broken, this makes the audience feel as if something bad it going to happen. In this sequence there is a lot of non-diegetic sound (soundtrack). It seems to change pace a lot of the time, for example it goes quite slow but intimidating to show that something is going to happen, something bad and also it goes very fast when something is in the action, like when the parents were running away from "the beast".
These two films use sound quite differently, as in how A Clockwork Orange the sound that is used it contradicting to what the scene is showing, this is called contrapuntal sound. This is effective because it makes the audience think about the scene as ti s quite an ambiguous situation, a situation which isn't normal, normally there would be quite parallel sounds, sound which links to the scene. That is the type of sound that is mainly used in The Purge. The parallel sound used in The Purge makes the sequence that little bit scarier as even though the audience can expect what is going to happen they don't know when and that is the scary part.