Thriller Work

I have been tasked as to chose 3 thriller films and to explain why they are thrillers. The films I have chosen are; The Woman in Black, Joy Ride and Phone Booth. The reason I have chose these films is because of they are in my opinion the best thriller films I have ever seen, and I will explain in more detail.

The Woman In Black
The Woman in Black is well known for making even the most hardest of men pee in their pants. The film is riddled with tense moments and scenes that will make you jump out of your skin.

The start of the film instantly gives you chills. It starts of with 3 Victorian-era children having a pretend tea party in their room, and while they have that, carnival - like music plays already giving the sense of chills. But when the children look towards the door (camera) you can see that someone or something is there. The music gets louder as the turn to look towards the windows and you start to think "is there something out there?". So as the children stand up, dropping their cups and stamping on their dolls, they move towards the window where I expected something to be there. But I found out I was wrong as they all stood up against the window, opened it and jumped out to their deaths. When the music stops, you can hear a woman's scream which turns out to be the mother. The camera pans back to a figure looking at the window which appears to be the woman in black.

This is only one example of the many chilling scenes in the Woman in Black. The reason why this is a thriller film is because of the tension that it gives to the viewer. The music, the creepy dolls and sounds in the old house really make the viewer know that somethings coming, but gives them the fear of the unknown. The setting of the old mansion is a real classic in terms of thrillers, and an old woman can be quite scary.

Joy Ride
Joy Ride (AKA Road Kill) is a film about 3 youngsters who talk to a truck driver and take the mick out of him. Turns out the truck driver is a psychotic killer who did not like what he heard and started to try and kill the teenagers. The movie makes the viewer ask "who is Rusty Nail (the truck driver)?" as you never see him during the film.

At the start of the film one of the teenagers (Lewis) arranges to take his girlfriend (Venna) on a road trip. He gets his best mate (Fuller) out of prison and brings him on the journey. When Lewis bought his new car, it came with a radio in which Lewis and Fuller was pretending to be a prostitute to a truck driver. They tell him, to go to the next hotel and meet him at room 17. They arrive and the boys stay in room 16, so the joke becomes clear to the driver when he opens the door to 17 that the prostitute isn't there. When the driver arrives, the boors look out the keyhole of the door and see a figure walk past and open the door to 17, where a man was staying. The next thing you hear are screams and crashing noises in the room and then the figure walks past the door again. The joke is now on Lewis and Fuller when later they are contacted by the driver and are now being hunted by him.

The reason why this film is a thriller is because it is making the viewer sit at the edge of their seat for the whole film. Rusty nail is always on the trail on the teenagers and he knows exactly what they are doing. The film gives you the sense of tension as you are not sure who Rusty Nail is going to kill next and how.

Phone Booth
This film is about a man (Stu) who is a very cocky and arrogant publicist in New York City who is also having an affair with his wife for another woman. He makes a call to his wife in a phone booth but is interrupted by a pizza boy who tries to offer him free pizza. When he finishes his call, the phone rings so he picks it up and finds a strange voice on the other end saying he has a 50.Cal sniper rifle aiming at him. Stu thinks the man is bluffing but the voice proves him wrong when he shoots a random man in the head. From there on out, people think Stu was the killer but if he leaves the phone booth, the shooter will kill him.

The suspense at which the shooter is telling Stu what to do and Stu can't do anything but do what the shooter says. One of the scenes in the film shows just how emotional things can get, the police have surrounded Stu who is still in the phone booth and the shooter tells him that he must make a choice between his wife, the the woman he is having an affair with. Stu breaks in to tears knowing that he can't go through with that but if he doesn't he will be shot. So Stu tells his wife, who has arrived at the scene, that he has had an affair with her but also explains that he is a bad person and wishes to change his ways, and then breaks down to crying again.

This scene is an emotional scene, however there are other scenes where the shooter tells Stu to do other things to get him in to trouble. You work out in the film that the shooter is only doing that to make Stu become a good person, but it is a more psychotic way of doing it. This is a thriller film because you are not sure as to what the shooter is going to come up with next.