Analysis Of Modern Thriller Openings

In this blog post i am going to analyse these for the openings of thrillers:

• Camera
• Editing 
• Sound
• Thriller conventions
• Mise en scene

Thriller conventions

• Cliff hangers
• Red herrings
• Maguffin
• Suspense
• Shock
• Enigmas

MEMENTO

This film has an extremely difficult narrative structure where events are told in 10 minutes segment but backwards. This echoes the confusion that the main character feels as he tries to remember events that took place.

The opening scene of Memento is a really effective one based on the editing and the sound or music put in place to go with it makes it very suspenseful as well as confusing for the audience. It allows the audience to almost immediately connect with the main character because neither of them know what is going on so they share the same confusion.

BRICK

This is the opening scene of a film called Brick. It functions quite well as an opening scene as it gives elements of suspense which is what you find in every thriller. It uses a lot of close up shots to show the emotions of the character although it doesn't really give anything away regarding whether he killed the girl or found her dead. It is a bit similar to the opening of Memento where it has someone dead and cuts to when they were alive and the story begins to unfold.

ZODIAC

This opening scene was really surprising and editing. At the start it started off normally with no suspense but then it stats to build up and what really created a shock was when the two characters were killed out of no where that was really surprising and not expected.