Thriller Openings

Thriller Openings

The opening to a film can be the most important part. The key to a successful opening sequence drags the audience in and captures their attention. If the opening is boring poorly made it can turn the audience away and not setup them up correctly for the rest of the film, or worse make them stop watching.  First impression is key as humans we quickly come to a decision about whether we will enjoy this movie or not. In this post, I will be looking at a strong opening sequence in a film and evaluate what they do which is successful.

The idea of an opening scene in thrillers could do a variety of things. For example, it can be used to confuse or scare the audience whilst building suspension at the same time.  Often these scenes can be uncomfortable to watch, which is what they are designed to do. For example, in the physiological thriller, ‘Silence of the Lambs’ the opening scene includes a shot in which the camera is moving around a forest. The only thing accompanying this shot type is an unsettling piece of music performed by an orchestra. As the camera continues to show more and more of the forest plain back credits appear right in the centre of the screen introducing the actors who are involved with the film. This simple idea of an opening scene doesn’t allow us to see anything into the movie’s plot which creates a sense of uncertainty.

The camera then comes to a fixed point where the first character is introduced into the film. The female character is seen to by climbing up a hill using ropes attached to the top of the hill. This again will confuse the audience as we have no indication into why she is climbing the hill. Once she reaches the top the camera continues to follow her closer introducing more detail into her looks. This gives us a more intricate view on this so far unknown character. As the scene develops it becomes clear that the women is on an assault course of sort. This reveals more information about the character but again doesn’t give us a clear image into why she is here or why she is on the assault course. The idea of mystery and not giving to much information away is rampant in the opening sequence to the film. This build of uncertainty is key to how the directors of this film want you to feel. The purposeful use to mystery creates a tense and successful opening scene. It intrigues us and makes us more likely to watch the rest of the film to find out about all these different uncertainties.

Once she reaches the top of the hill the music continues to play whilst she attempts the rest of the course. The music comes across as very sinister and creates a tense atmosphere as the camera tracks the female character. The music leads us to believe that something bad is going to happen as the women is alone in the woods. Though nothing does happen, the score does a good job of leading us to believe it will. The score is probably the most important piece in this scene as it’s plays the biggest contribution to the horrible atmosphere of the sequence. It also adds another layer of confusion as we have no idea why the lady is there or why the music sounds so sinister. The tone of the film is hugely set by the score which was written by Howard Shore who also wrote the music for big blockbuster films such as ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’. The music is effective as it adds another layer to the scene. That being a sense of danger and tension. This builds as the scene develops.

The location in which the scene is set it very vaguely presented to us. At this point in the film we have no idea as in to why we are introduced to the lady here. As the scene further develops another character is introduced. We learn a few things about our other character just by the few lines of convocation they have. Firstly, we learn the name of the character we have been following for the past minute or two and we establish the she must be a part of the FBI as the man who passes her a message has a hat reading ‘FBI’ on it. Also, we understand why she is on an assault course as she must be training to become a FBI agent. Just by having a small fifteen second conversation with a new character we find out lots of different types of information and are slightly more introduced the female character now known as Starling. This conversation is key to the development of the film as we move out of the opening scene.

The last bit of the scene is Starling running into what we assume to be the location of the FBI training camp. As she runs into the building we see dozens more people in the shot. Only a few seconds ago Starling was running an assault course by herself with no one else to be seen and now as she heads back to the centre building more people begin to appear. This is a big hint into Starling’s character as it seems that she prefers to work alone. This also happens throughout the film as when she meets Hannibal Lector (The serial killer in which the film is based on) she seems him alone many times, which could be dangerous. We get the idea that something must have happened in her childhood to make her want to be alone as it’s a familiar theme throughout.

In conclusion, the key to a successful opening thriller sequence is a sense of mystery. You don’t want to give away too much information about the characters or the plot of the film but you want the audience to be introduced to the tone of the movie. The ‘Silence of the Lambs’ does this very successfully as it uses very vague shot types to entice the audience but not give away anything about the identity of the character or the focus on the plot. Also towards the end of the opening scene it begins to develop the main character by introducing a few pieces of key information. This was important as it allows us to learn more about the character.