Our horror trailer 'Damnation' is influence heavily by religious connotation and theme that construct the basic narrative of the film in which a girl gets possessed by some sort of entity (presumably the devil) who then goes on a killing spree and passing the possession onto others. Now my group and I were well aware that using religious connotations in films can be very risky since portraying them in a certain way can cause a lot of upset from people of that religion and because of this the film could be easily slated or even unable to view. Naturally we weren't going to do anything extreme religion wise but we couldn't take that risk, so I took it upon myself to watch and analyse a film (in this case a horror film since it further relates to what we're doing) that uses religious connotation and themes, but not to the point in which it's considered offensive or unjust. The film in question is CARRIE (1976).
After watch the film (which by the way is a great film) I came to a slightly odd conclusion, but it's what my theory behind the religious connotations used in this movie is. My theory is that religious themes are used to establish the ground work for the film and its themes, but it's not the basis for the narrative and the main reasoning for the events in the film to play out, but rather as something that can be questioned as the cause of the events based on people’s preferences. The reason for this is that in the first act of the film the use of religious connotation is very strong and helps to establish the themes portrayed in the film since we can see that Carrie's mother is a very strict Christian and that she blames everything bad that happens to Carrie based on the fact that she has sinned (e.g. the scene where Carrie confronts her mother about getting her first period and not telling her about this sort of thing shows her mother merely thinking that if she didn't sin it wouldn't have happened).
So yeah the first act is strong on religion, but in the second act the religious themes and connotations take a back seat in favour of Carrie dealing with teenage issues and starting to become more and more accepted by her piers (e.g. spending more time with Tommy Ross and even being asked out to the prom) and the scenes with her mother become incredibly downplayed since the scenes are much shorter and Carrie no longer become the victim to her mother’s views. It's at this point that the religious connotation seem to be something of an afterthought since the film focuses more on Carrie and her struggles (both good and bad) but it's towards the end of the prom scene that the religious come back into play. It starts with both Tommy and Carrie making a joke saying "to the devil with false modesty" which suddenly sparks off some very deep and dark music. After that Carrie gets elected prom queen only to have pigs blood be poured all over her (pigs blood representing un-holiness since the pig is considered an animal unfit to eat according to Judaism). Carrie (believing that everyone is laughing at her) then uses her powers to kill everyone in the room and the image of her covered in blood and surrounded by fire shows some sort of devil-ish embodiment.
Once she returns home the room is surrounded by candles (which shows the light of god) and after taking a bath and washing the blood off her mother confesses that her sins were the reasons for Carrie's birth (she agreed not to have sex but one day gave into temptation) and that "now the devil has come home". Carrie's mother then attempts to kill Carrie by literally stabbing her in the back but then Carrie uses the kitchen knives to crucify her mother (similar to Jesus being crucified upon the cross). Carrie then out of fear and frustration accidentally destroys her house and the last we see of her is that she is slowly dying with her dead mother in her arms and a close up on a figure of a crucified Jesus Christ (R.I.P Carrie... you're flying in heaven, not burning in hell). So you can see that Carrie' use of religion starts strong and ends strong, but the middle portion of the film allows the audience to take a breather and focus on other things rather than the film forcing the religious themes down your throat and because of this the religious themes come off as more of a possibility behind the events that play out in the film rather than the main reason for them (since the blood being poured onto Carrie could be a result of spite rather than sinning).
So after looking at Carrie I knew that if we were to feature religious connotations, it would have been something that eventually gets underplayed rather than being a primary basis for the entire story. So because of this we decided that the first half of the film should be strong on religion but then underplayed in favour of a more survival horror/zombie infestation type of story. This will allow us to get the audience familiar with the religion theme we're portraying but not keep it dominant throughout the course of the film so that (like Carrie) the religious themes could be considered as possibility for the events that take place throughout the course of the story but not being the exact reasoning as to why they occur.
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