Disturbia

To make a thriller, something important is to open the movie with some form of action scene which Disturbia does very well, starting off with a slow tranquil opening in a brightly coloured area, being paced out to an action scene, unexpected by the audience in the movie there’s a quick car crash which leaves the audience in question seeing if the father of the teenager is alive or not, another important aspect of the movie is to keep the views wondering, not knowing if everything is okay, and in this scene, the point in which the dad has been wounded makes them curious if he’s okay or not. Sadly the father dies during the car crash, leaving the boy desolated, this furthermore carries on to another important part of making a thriller movie what it is. To make the main character in the movie miserable or to take something away from them that is important and in this case it’s his dad, after a court hearing you can see that he is extremely upset and grumpy, then his freedom is slowly taken away by being put under house arrest which also makes him unhappy, slowly decreasing the characters moods.

                There’s a massive change in the character from the start of the movie, which is vital so the character doesn’t become boring through the movie, from being upset, angry, depressed or grumpy from the beginning of the movie, he soon meets a girl which certainly changes his mood from the opening, which is making him happy and excited through the course of the movie, also somewhat stalking her from the beginning as he is clearly interested, through the movie this feeling increases and you can see him becoming more nervous as the movie progresses around this girl, gradually increasing his mood as she does little things that take away his heart. On a news report through the movie it states that “A blue mustang with a dent on the front was involved in a crime” later in the night you see outside the window next door to the house there’s a man with a blue mustang with a dent on the front pulling into the drive, this makes the audience think and wonder about the mysterious man next door, if they pay attention to the small details through the film. Slight jumps and scares are important throughout the movie, as it becomes tense about the man in his house, the characters mother grabs his shoulder and both the characters jump, making the audience snap out of concentration on the man’s car, which disappears when the screen next looks towards that general direction, using the enigma code by leaving one of the puzzles unsolved, this is confused even more when you next see the car during the next day, but you can see that there is no dent, leaving the audience confused as to what happened to the dent that had been imprinted upon the car.

                Building tension then releasing it happens a lot during a thriller film, that is used in order to thrill you just like the genre suggests, as the boy looks through the gap in the fence through to the man with the blue mustangs house, the character comes across angry and scary as he asks questions in the general direction of the boy, getting slowly closer and building a lot of tension in the audiences mind, which is then changed and the tension is dropped when the man proceeds to pick up a small animal with care, and he is changed to be seen as kind and affectionate, which switches the audiences mind very quickly. At some points the tension builds up and then there is an anticlimax, such as one scene there is a point where the man being accused in the heads of the audience as the supposed “killer”, without any further actions in the movie proving it, he is seen with a knife going near a woman he has just bought into his house and the extreme close ups of the object unnerve the audience and make them feel as if something terrible is to happen, which then all that happens it the man takes off the price tag from the woman’s dress, so the tension is dropped. From earlier in the film where the mysterious stranger is seen with the knife, you can see (again with extreme close ups to build more tension) him running towards her and her screaming in the house which then the attention is drawn away, making the audience more scared as they cannot fully see what is happening, to add more tension onto that, the man appears staring at the camera used to look into the event, as if he has committed a crime which convinces the audience of their questions, only for the woman to calmly leave the house and to walk back into her car and leave, dropping all our thoughts.

                The movie as a whole is paced out, from an action scene at the beginning to slowly revealing a storyline, as at the beginning half of the movie it seems to mainly be happy and ordinary, just like most lives, then it slowly creeps out to be unnerving and somewhat scary. Also an important part of a thriller movie is to make the movie from the perspective of the underdog, as the boy has lost everything, his family and his freedom, he is clearly the underdog in this state, and the mysterious man is most oppressor or the stronger character in the movie. The underdog in a thriller must be the man that prevails and goes forward to achieve a goal that from the movie seems to be nearly impossible yet they will always be able to succeed. From a point in the movie the mysterious man appears in the house, with the underdog afraid due to his change of character throughout the movie, the mysterious man is extremely friendly with the underdogs mother and she is the same with him which begins to create tension without a scene that is supposed to be a regular scene, this builds up as the man getting close the his mother which makes the audience again wonder if what is happening is safe, or if everything is normal? Using the whole storyline as the enigma code, confused as to if this man is actually doing anything wrong or it’s just our thoughts convincing us that he is indeed a killer.

                Through the anticlimaxes in the whole of the movie, towards the end of the movie there is a scene that completely unlocks the puzzles being created throughout the whole film and lets the audience realise that this man is indeed actually the killer that we all concluded to ourselves so long ago. As the underdog is being pushed down and secluded through emotions and by the man he fears, it seems like all is at an end, all the people that could possibly help have been taken and his mother is no longer safe, yet to make the thriller complete, the main character must overcome all the obstacles that stand before them. At the end of this movie the underdog does rise up beyond all the odds that suggest that he won’t and that he will fail, the whole of the last scene is tense as all the over scenes in the movie would have built up to the last climax. Creating an enclosed and scared atmosphere with dark lighting during tense moments, the underdog is trapped between the floor boards attempting to break his way through. Chasing is a key element in a thriller movie, being chased or the feeling of being chased makes the body tense up and have the burning feeling in the back of the neck that creates the atmosphere that you are being watched or that you can feel the characters in the movie are being watched or followed by the oppressor, the underdog in this movie is stuck in the murderers house which would unnerve you throughout the whole scene. As all the climaxes have an anticlimax it makes the audience think very hard towards the fact that they might just not believe what their own mind is thinking. With lots of bumps of tense moments, to calm and happy moments, scary scenes and a tonne of emotion, this makes a thriller and uses the enigma code to its finest, also using all these aspects to make a good storyline. Keep the audience wondering.