Horror, thriller and suspense films

The two past days we have watched opening scenes from films like Halloween, Friday 13^th and Don’t Look Now. We discussed what a thriller should include and what kind of varieties of suspense-thrillers there are. I’m going to post some of the links for the openings scenes. One of my favourit opening scenes was the beginning of Halloween (the first one) it is completely shoot in “pov” and the music and lightning is really good and has a really good build up of tension.

Thrillers are known to create different kinds of emotions such as, intense excitement, anticipation, expectation, anxiety and nerve racking tension. But to create these kinds of emotions a thriller has to include some criteria’s like, suspense, build up of tension, great sound elements and much more. To also be able to differentiate a thriller from a horror, a thriller is often less gore then a horror and reflects reality better. A thriller is often also quite clever and well-constructed and in a thriller the main point is often that an escape seems impossible and life itself is threatened, how ever it could be very difficult to tell if the film is a horror or a thriller.

The kind of different varieties of suspense-thriller we discussed was genres such as,
- action and adventure
- sci-fi
- crime-caper
- western
- film noir
- even romantic or comedy
So then this also gives you a perspective of how many different kind of thriller there are out there and how many different ideas you can come up to make a thriller.

Link: Opening scene Don't look now
What I like about the opening scene in Dont look now is that its really well filmed and edited. There's also a lot to comment in this movie thanks to the importance of every shot in the opeing scene and has a crusial mening to the film.