Lucid really surprised me because I literally had to put my computer on mute and make the screen smaller when I was watching. That was my typical reaction to horror movies.
There is one type of horror film which I would appreciate the most: no bloody killing-people violence, no disgusting ghost haunting around, no ugly alien gun fighting, however, all the story happened under a very normal circumstance, in daily life, in the reality. Yet this “common” environment would give you the scariest experience, because they feel so REAL.
In this sense, Lucid definitely reminded me of Paranormal Activity (2007). Both of the stories happened during the sleep. Something we all do every day and every night. A lot of shots even seemed like too normal and too slow, however, a feeling of curious and scary has already been developed in the story. To convey this, Lucid used several film techniques: firstly, the color: It happened during the night, so the room seems dim and dark. We can see a kind of bark and blue shadow on the actor’s face. Second, the sound: I really appreciated the whole film was so quiet. There was no music, which I think would’ve ruined the film; no big loud sound, the audio was exactly the sound happening during sleeping. Third, different shots from different angles: Although the actor was sleeping, the director did not just use similar shots. We have close-ups on his eyes, on his lips; we have wide shot of the room; we have the full shot of the house, etc. We also have seen the shot when the actor woke up and being paranoid. All of these were telling the story in different ways. And, remember the very beginning? With the green UFO thing floating near the window, the story has already given the hint of something “bad” was going to happen.
For the things that I maybe not quite agree was the last shot. I felt like I had already built a very tense feeling for the past a few minutes, but the last scene did not release all my fears. I think the whole film was very humble (which is good), so the ending could’ve gone better by making it more dramatic. I wanted to see a big surprise at the end.
