The tone of the entire film, including music and visual effects, is often ominous and unsettling.
A man kills his daughter's pet pigeons with a hatchet (offscreen). We hear the sound of chopping and fluttering birds, while his daughter. visibly distressed, stands outside pleading for him to stop. He then pushes her aside, leaving blood on her shirt.
A badly damaged human skull is shown during the courtroom scene. A lawyer inserts an axe into the holes in the skull to prove that the axe is the murder weapon.
In a flashback, young Lizzie visits her father while he is preparing a corpse in their basement. Her father forces her to lay her hands on the corpse. When Lizzie jerks away, she tears out a tube, which sprays blood.