Arlington road

In this session we watched the opening of several thriller films, such a 'Se7en' and deja vu. I preferred the opening of 'Arlington Road'.

‘Arlington Road’ is Psychological thriller directed by Mark Pellington I watched the opening clip of this film. It didn’t give me a lot of information about the film, but I think it helped to set the scene. The opening scene consisted of different clips of a deserted neighbourhood. The clips used were innocent and quite normal; the clips included empty swings that was swinging, a road sign, children playing, a dog and a white fence.


The eerie sound track used in this clip changes the atmosphere of it makes it seem sinister and it creates tension and fear. Along with the sound track there is the sound of children playing and laughing, there is also a dog barking.

This sound is slow and it sounds distorted this makes it feel and seem sinister. The sound track and the images shown contradict each other, as the images shown are quite normal whilst the sound has been distorted which makes the audience think that something is not right.


Along with the distorted and eerie sound used in this clip, it is also a negative edit has been used. This emphasises the fact that something is not right. I think this helps to build up tension as the audience will be wondering what is going on and who is going to be effected. Innocent things are used in the opening clip; this evokes emotions from the audience. There is a close up of a dog playing with a toy and a middle shot of children playing.

The font of the opening titles is Bold and white, and some of the titles is in black. I think this is effective because there is already a lot of peculiar things going on in the clip and if fancy titles were used they might distract the audience from what’s going on in the clip. The majority of the writing was in the bottom third of the screen.

This opening didn’t have any dialogue and it didn’t have much description of what the film was about, but I still think it was an effective opening, it reminds me of a montage as it gives you a feel for the neighbourhood and it lets you see the local area. It also suggests that the neighbourhood is important in the film.