The opening credit sequence for Showtime's hit thriller, “Dexter,” clearly marks the series as an innovative, provocative, and darkly spun show. The opening credits nearly mirror the start to Mary Harron's 2000 “American Psycho,” and with good reason. Dexter Morgan represents the inconsolable paradox of a serial killer who, on the surface, appears as a functional and even laudable addition to society – the same as Christian Bale's character in the Brett Easton Ellis novel-based film. The actor who plays Dexter, Michael C. Hall, is nearly an exact reproduction of Bale's character. Furthermore, both actors portray their characters in similar fashion – charismatic, charming, playful, yet fraught with deeply seeded malice, and a penchant for murder as method of what they would deem, ‘social purification.'
[...] The blood that falls is neat, precise, and visually interesting as it mirrors the circular qualities of the drain. Next we see our subject absorb the flowing blood with a scrap of white tissue. The camera zooms in for an extreme close up as the white paper comes into contact with the deep richness of the blood. The white and red create a strong contrast as the red slowly bleeds across the span of the white screen, though half still remains white before they cut to the next shot the transformation is not complete. [...]
[...] The music parallels Dexter's character in that it creates an aura of a menacing presence but somehow comes across as cheerful. The sound effects are also very important. As mentioned before, the decisive ‘SLAP' of the mosquito jump starts the piece; the sound it creates is just as impactful as the action itself. The sliding of his finger down his face and the razor shaving against the grain impose an unnerving hunch that the slightest flinch will cause blood. Even more unpleasant is the sound that resembles a chainsaw as Dexter carves his ham and the consequent sizzling sound as the fleshy tissue fries. [...]
[...] Next we see a matching shot of the knife slicing through what appears to be an orange, the peel looks fleshy here and the tight shot permits misinterpretation of what he is actually cutting. Dexter then juices the fruit and what initially was thought to be an orange, emerges as an exotic fruit with a red gooey inside which he forcefully deprives of its innards. After the kitchen scene, the makers of the sequence uncover, bit by bit, more of what Dexter looks like. [...]
[...] This breakfast sequence also makes great use of slow and sped up motion applied during the editing process. The process of cracking eggs, frying them, and eating them all happen in a matter of seconds, each cut seamlessly spliced together in a series of visually stimulating images: the cracking of an egg with shells falling haphazardly, the sizzle of grease and egg bubbling from inside a pan, a knife slicing through yolk and ketchup, blending white, yellow, and red like a painter would mix colors for their canvas, the red hot coils of the stovetop, a drop of ketchup next to a round egg and the subsequent splatter of ensuing drops (strikingly similar to the drops of blood next to the sink drain). [...]
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