The mise en scene of a film is very important when exploring the semiotics: the clothes or props of characters can be considered as being symbolic when examining in detail their personalities and deeper meanings.
For example- if a character is dressed in the color red, this can connote danger or, contrarily, sexual desire (depending on the traits of the particular character, of course). An example of this is the character known as 'Curley's wife' in the film Of Mice and Men as her red lipstick mirrors the fact she is "jail-bait" when trying to seduce the men on the ranch.
Due to the fact that our film has a female actor to play one of the antagonists, we have chosen to deliberately feature her wearing a thick coat of smudged red lipstick on her lips in order to show she is an evil character as the color red will reflect this. Furthermore, the fact the lipstick is smudged and not applied neatly to her lips will mirror the fact her life is out of control as she is a drug user who has let her addictions dominate her life to the extreme of murdering her own daughter.
The majority of films- not just horror- feature the antagonist in dark clothing as this represents their dark side to their personality and marks them as being separate from the protagonist who is usually featured wearing light or pastel clothing. Take the film Jennifer's Body for example, where the demonically possessed teenage girl, Jennifer, is dressed in very dark clothing to help mirror this stereotype of how antagonists dress in horror films.
However- the mise en scene of a film can also be used craftily by the producers to help convey the deeper semiotic meanings such as the split personality of a character as shown in the short film Sleeping Patterns that I analysed for my research into the horror genre: the girl is dressed half wearing black to show the darker side to her character as she becomes possessed during the night, and the other half of her wearing white to show how they're is still an innocent side to her character as she has no control over it and is actually a good person at heart.
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