Emily Smail

Mud Boy - Short Film Analysis

 

Mud boy is a social realism film directed by Nic Penrake made in 2009. The story charts the attempt in looking for a missing boy from an abusive household. The film follows Artistotle's narrative theory as it has a distinctive start, middle and end. The expostion is displayed as an abusive household with the growing concern of a missing child, Jamie. When his younger sister, Nina, plays in the garden after hearing a violent row between her mother and her mother's boyfriend, Eddie, she discovers a hand burried in the ground. Nina digs up the small body which causes rising action as the audience learn that it is Jamie, her missing brother. This internal conflict is soon complicated by the fact that Nina does not immediatly tell her mother that Jamie had been found. Instead, she suggests that they get some biscuits and he can "pick a DVD". This is then followed by the third act, when Nina is washing the dirt off her hands, a police woman approaches her. This immediatly snaps the audience back to reality and makes them consider the fact that perhaps everything is not as it seems. Nina then attempts to introduce Jamie to the police woman as she was asking after him and seemed concerned for his wellbeing. The police woman seems to be at ease with the sitaution as she looks reasured when she sees Nina call out Jamie's name. However, the falling action of the film is when the police woman's expression changes to horor and invites Nina back into the house. The audience then see's that Jamie's corpse lays in the hole that Nina dug him up from. The whole time Nina was playing and speaking with Jamie seems to be her imagination as as soon as an adult was brought into her perspection of reality it was broken and the awful truth was revealed. Then, finally the denuement portrays Eddie being arrested for suspicion of murder, this creates normality for the audience as the conflicts have been resolved.