The movie seemed to use the mixing of the present and future to create suspense and confusion for the characters and for the viewers. This confusion between what was taking place (the real) and what was not real. However I found the most interesting part was how ugly the woman / killer was in the end. The horror created in the film, at least for me, came more from the looks of the old woman not an intimidation factor. The old woman appeared as a small child while she was being chased but in the end was the complete opposite a shriveled up old woman.
This movie also appeared to be using the use of themes to a greater extent than films we have watched so far this semester. The focus on water and glass breaking came to the culmination in the end of the film when John has died and kicked out the window next to the canals. Also I have to admit I did not expect the image of the old woman in the red coat to appear in the image on the slide bringing the film full circle like some of the films we have watched this year.
I was also most interested by the foreshadowing and full-circle-creating elements of "Don't look now." In fact, I think the aspect of the film that made it most enjoyable as a horror film was the attention to detail the director took in blurring the sequence of time and creating a cyclical plot. While it wasn't a nail-bitingly frightful kind of scary, "Don't look now" was successfully uncanny for me because it was suspenseful in a sneaky and unpredictable way that didn't really all click until the final moments. The most inexplicable aspect of this story, the characters' ability to see future or act as a medium, is what gave the plot a cyclical movement, as we were given the scenes and signs of the actions (deaths) to come but were at the time unaware of it. The director created a suspenseful atmosphere by making it evident that clues, like the photograph of the figure in the red hood, were somehow foreboding but not revealing now they were foreshadowing. This method of relating the story really brings to mind the question of fate that many other genre films delve in.
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