Modern thriller openings

History of violence

History of violence meets a lot of conventions of a thriller through the use of suspense, pacing and and sound. 'Suspense' is used effectively right from the beginning because there is not a lot of sound and we feel suspense because there is a lack of knowledge of what is going there is no indication of what the film is about. Also there is the use of 'slow pacing', which made this thriller effective because it added to the suspense building up until we found out that the two men are murderers. Last but not least he use of sound was effective because they used mainly diegetic in the opening scene which helps give a primary feel of the tense atmosphere in the scene.




Zodiac

Zodiac meets the conventions of a thriller through tension and suspense and stimulates the viewers mood. During the first scene suspense was built as an element of surprise and fluctuates because at first everything seemed fine even though the girl seemed a bit uneasy for coming late, then they reach the mountain edge and they are happy but when the the black car pulled up suddenly caused a feel of worry especially when the girl would not say who it was, then when it came back there was an very high suspense as the driver of the black car came out but we could not see what he looked like and walked towards them and killed them, Th beginning is quite fast paced except those moments of high tension and suspense.


No country for old men

No country uses suspense and sound quite differently. Suspense is very predictable in this thriller, it starts off quite innocent after the guy gets arrested but as soon as escapes and starts using the police car and stops a man for no reason and suspense builds as he walks up to the man with an oxygen tank type of weapon. Sound is all  mainly diegetic and except when there is a guy who does a voice over at the beginning.