Analysing Thriller Clips

On Monday's lesson with Tony, we were watching 2 thriller clips out of five as we didn’t have any spare time left during the lesson. The first clip we analysed was a film called 'Arlington Road'. At first I thought by just reading the title, that the clip wouldn't be that scary since I haven't seen it before, but it turned out that I was wrong. I was so scared, I practically screamed when I saw bits of it but it was even scarier without even having to watch it. It was very disturbing too. Well as a group we were given a task, we each had a to choose what part of the film we wanted to analyse which included the lighting, use of camera, music, editing, setting and location then we had to note it down on the worksheet that was given to us. In my opinion, I think that what made the clip so disturbing were the abnormal noises, the solarized pictures along with the flashing lights and not only the fact that it was set in the suburbs, but the shivering movements of the camera too.

The second clip we analysed was a film called 'Collateral' starring Tom Cruise and Jason Statham. I've seen bits of this film before so thankfully it wasn’t that scary. Surprisingly, the clip wasn’t as long as the first one. What happened was that two men in the airport picked up the wrong suitcases as they bumped into each other. The problem was that because they both have the exact same looking suitcases as each other, they didn’t know that they picked up the wrong one. Here it reveals a dramatic irony, implying that the characters do not know what is happening while the audience do. Just from looking at that clip it gives me the impression that Tom Cruise is one of the bad guys and maybe Jason Statham is an undercover cop or a secret agent who bumped into the man on purpose to collect the other suitcase before he does something dangerous from what’s mysteriously inside of it. I think this because whilst watching it, before Jason Statham dropped his suitcase, he looked at where he placed his first, then after apologizing, he looked to his right and Tom Cruise's one, looking at it as if that was his target, and then took it.

The other clips that we were going to look at were '28 Days Later','The Shining', and 'What Lies Beneath' however, like I had said, we sadly didnt have enough time to.