Analysing An Opening Scene Of A Thriller Movie

In class we watched a sequence of opening scenes of thriller movies, we had to figure out what sub-genres is was, also focus on the camera angles, mis en scene and sound.

We watched 'Momento' which is a psychological thriller. Its about a man that has a short term memory loss and is unable to store new memories, so by using notes and tattoos he searches for the man that raped and murdered his wife.




Momento uses a lot of close up shots on objects that are significant in the film. They start of with a extreme close up of a picture, but we really cant tell what it is, because it becomes blurry and changes colour. The music is very mysterious and airy which makes us realise that it’s a thriller, as well as the gunshot, plus there’s blood splattered everywhere. The interesting thing about this film is at the beginning they reverse what happens which makes me want to watch it MORE!



What Lies Beneath

The film I chose to analyse myself was ‘What Lies Beneath’; the reason being is that the film looks strange, yet again it looks very interesting! I hope to watch the whole FILM!

The opening of the trailer is all blacked out and slowly the music starts to come in to play, this keeps the audience expecting more.

The production company’s title appears when there’s a full black background, it comes in slowly, and at that time there’s fog being used so it comes in slowly with it. Then after the production companies’ names are shown, the title of the movie appears, it's shown as if it's being reflected by water also it’s as if we're seeing the title in a dark, gloomy and mysterious night under the moon.

Then all of a sudden a ghostly face appears, we only get to see it for a second before it moulds into the main characters face. At this point, were not really sure what we just saw and that keeps us guessing.

Next the camera does a ‘Jump shot’ to the scene were she’s blow drying her hair, and suddenly it just stops working. She tries to fix it, and then she gets a little electric shock, but she does manage to fix it. She carries on blow drying her hair in front of the mirror, the camera is placed behind her, and so we get to see an over the shoulder shot. We can see the mirror and you can’t see any reflection because the mirror is all foggy.

Then the camera is placed just in front of the bathroom, so it looks as if someone is watching her.

The camera slowly comes closer and closer to the main character, she starts breathing heavily, and this shows us that something is clearly wrong! At this point we sort of get a clue about what the film is going to be about, as we realise the main character doesn’t feel safe and seems quite scared.