Modern Opening Thrillers

When looking at the beginnings of thrillers you can see that there are many similar techniques used. I looked at the beginning of a few thrillers and were asked to analyse different techniques used:



The opening of "No country for old men" starts off using non-diegetic sound, a voice over of a man with a southern accent which lets the audience know, and puts the viewer on guard as stereotypically an accent from the deep south, such as cowboys. This creates a feeling of for the viewer that there might be some cowboy action or something has gone wrong. The image at the beginning is a series of dark landscape scenes of native american land filled with shadows which adds an evil feel to all of the nature, like the nature in the film is turning evil. As things start to light up as day begins it gives the impression that something big is about to start. 




The opening of "Brick" starts with non-diegetic western music, which feels a bit weird. The sound is almost trickled into the film but the transition is a little off putting. This is followed by a pot to a close up of shoes which again is a little bit of an odd way to start, it gives the audience very little information about what is going on and makes the audience question why they are being shown shoes. This then transitions to a close up of a face which then cuts to the view of a tunnel where we can see that the face and the shoes belong to a boy and the boy is crouched looking over at the dead body of a woman. He appears to be quite fascinated by the dead body which is really creepy. This is then emphasized by the western music that is still playing in the background. However the fact that the boy is looking at the woman in this way, and the way that he is positioned on the other side of the tunnel crouched makes the audience curious as to whether he killed this person.