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Arielle San Antonio
Professor McClure
Writing 39 B
4 December 2015
A Rhetorical Analysis of Now You Pay
Other than always studying for exams, some college students
simultaneously experience a kind of pressure that tests their ability to choose right from
wrong such as being tempted into an act that can affect a significant other. It is inevitable
for college students to easily make poor decisions while being oblivious to the mental toll
it can take on the important people that surround them and the certain consequences. In
our group presentation, Now You Pay is a short horror film that exemplifies an adolescent
boy who is tempted into cheating with his girlfriend’s best friend and suffers
consequences from this unfaithful love affair and pre marital sex. Pre marital sex, which
serves as one of the tropes, is common in young adults and has generally been perceived
to be a sin, therefore, our group presentation particularly chose a video medium since it is
able to clearly show the depravity in both temptation and betrayal by the use of body
language of the characters and dialogue. In addition, the ultimate consequence that results
from temptation and betrayal in this video, death, are horrifically shown via acting, jump
scares and distinct visual and audio effects so that our group’s film is able to instill fear
into our audience and fall under the genre of horror.
Horror movies in general include suspense, a sense of real-life threat and dread
for our audience. Our film, Now You Pay has all these three factors. It is located in a
college setting, where the protagonist, Nam, finds himself coming home to a school
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project, as well as his girlfriend, Anson, who is accompanied by her best friend Rachael.
Due to the fact that our film firstly exhibits young adults hanging out and having casual
conversations, it is able to appeal to the ethos of our audience, since our audience falls
under the same age as our characters in the film and in that way, our film seems more
realistic. In the beginning of our film, there are no horror scenes until it gradually
escalates to the midst of the plot. We deliberately made Anson an extremely sweet girl
friend in the very first scene when she mentions that she prepared dinner for Nam, so that
the audience is able to point out the very first instances in which Nam could be tempted
into something that hurts his girlfriend while Rachael betrays her very own best friend,
Anson. Going further into the film when Rachael speaks with Nam alone in the kitchen,
the body language that she uses is extremely flirtatious. We, as young adults, understand
the concept of flirting because there are many college couples roaming around in UCI.
Flirting requires the use of seducing body language and verbal contact that usually
signals that you have deep interest in the person. However, in this scene particular,
Rachael’s flirtatious behavior gives off an impression that she is actually manipulating
(tempting) Nam into an unfaithful act towards his girlfriend when she asks him to “hang
out” since Anson will be away. The moment she uses seducing body language such as the
sway of her hips as she walks towards Nam, the gentle touch on his shoulder, and eye
contact, the audience can guess that Rachael is in on something evil since we have
already molded the audience’s mind into believing that Anson is an angelic human being
that would never hurt her boyfriend.
I have learned from my Writing 39B course that horror films are generally
comprised of tropes. I have also examined that tropes have a large contribution in
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rhetoric. Because tropes direct its audience toward the underlying message or theme of
the film, we purposely included a few tropes into our short film in order to effectively
communicate the immorality of temptation and betrayal. The first trope that is apparent in
Now You Pay is the warning phone call. This specific trope allows the audience to expect
that a twisted event will happen to the person who receives the warning phone call. In our
film, Nam receives a phone call in the middle of the night from an unknown caller that
tells him “You will pay.” in a disturbing, fiendish tone. Before the phone call occurred,
Nam and Rachael’s intentions for each other were evident. Rachael and Nam desire to
have sex with each other even though Nam is in a relationship with Anson. Because their
actions are morally wrong, considering the fact that they are going to have premarital sex,
the audience can guess that Nam is getting himself into a troubled situation since he
especially received this warning phone call after he and Rachael clearly showed their
sexual intentions for each other without Anson being home. The trope functions as a way
to get the audience to react and flood the audience’s mind with the possibilities of what
can happen next. The moment the audience hears this deep, threatening voice, the thought
of the film as a horror is created and initiates the audience to wary.
In horror genre, sound effects and vivid visuals that exhibit the idea of Noel
Carroll’s threatening and impure monster play a crucial role in provoking fear, which
came from his literary text The Nature of Horror. Our group’s main objective was to
ultimately scare our audience through these two major components that have an
important impact on classifying a film as horror. There are a handful of examples in our
film that scare the audience by simply showing something that is an “extraordinary
character in an ordinary world” as stated by Carroll. When Rachael approaches the dark
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hallway and turns on the light, she unexpectedly sees a tall, pale girl stagnant and
standing with her hair unusually covering her face. The girl comes off as threatening
because she is unusually positioned and the camera slowly approaches her covered face
to deliberately make the audience question her identity and how she looks. Rachael thinks
that she is hallucinating so she rubs her eyes and the figure suddenly disappears. The film
gradually becomes more frightening with disturbing visuals of the ominous girl that
appears abruptly. Since Nam received a foreboding phone call while Rachael
unpredictably sees a threatening figure, the audience can believe that these two
individuals who are obliging to premarital sex after temptation and betrayal, are going to
be punished for their wrong doings. The film quickly escalates to Rachael’s death after
the audience sees Nam unbuttoning his shirt, ready to cheat on Anson and hears Rachael
screaming loudly with pain. After Rachael’s alarming scream, the audience ultimately
sees who the ominous girl truly is – Anson. Before Nam dies from his immoral choices,
he receives one last phone call that tells him “Now, you will pay.” As Anson is holding a
knife with a phone on the other hand, her pale, bloody face is finally revealed at the very
end to show that she was making the threatening phone calls. Due to the fact that there is
a twist in Anson’s character (sweet to impure), the audience is shocked and frightened.
My role, or personal mark in this group project was to and co-direct. By using the
iMovie software, I smoothly transitioned each scene to a different scene in the film
when necessary. I also applied sound effects such as Rachael’s scream in her death
scene ,the loud bass background sound effect, and Anson’s evil phone call voice over
in order to contribute the film as a horror genre. My two crucial contributions
positively provided assistance to assure our video is woven together (via audio and
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visual effects) so that it is comprehensive to our audience. All films require editing so
that the audience is able to keep up with the whole point of the story. It will keep the
audience engaged, aware of what the main character is up to, and most of all
entertained. Because Sally filmed the movie, it allowed me to give her a lot of
assistance since I did not have to act. It was important for me to be there while my
group filmed so that I would have a clear visual of how the movie would play out.
The acting staff played a big role in bringing the short horror film alive. They all
contributed their own ideas into making the film our film by adding onto their
dialogue to help the comprehension of our audience. In general, my team members
individually have their own qualities that bring out the best in them. They each made
sure to voice their own opinion without bringing anyone down or being complicated.
Although each of us had different opinions, we made sure to come to an agreement.
In all honesty, the only improvement that I could see was that we could have
communicated better. For instance, we all were busy with other things that had to deal
with school so we handled our film assignments with a short amount of time. Because
of this it did cause a little stress, but in the end, our group had positive attitudes and
motivation to finish the project, which made me very happy with the outcome of our
short horror film. Our film ultimately achieved its goal in portraying the horrifying
consequences of temptation and betrayal through the components that make up a
horror genre such as acting, tropes, visual and audio effects.
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Work Cited
Carroll, Noël (1987). The Nature of Horror. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46
(1):51-59.