No country for old men.

In lesson, my classmates and I watched a thriller movie: No country for old men. The majority found it highly entertaining and scary- the film provided suspense and tension throughout.
The suspense generally was due to the mise en scene and the sound- which emphasises the scene and the possible fate of the characters in the film.

How was suspense created in the film watched?

Based in Texas, the plot was that the main character- Llewelyn Moss finds a massacre of dead bodies and stashes of cocaine isolated in the desert. He finds 2 million dollars, which he keeps to himself. A psychopathic serial killer- Anton Chigurh is in pursuit of the money and killing everyone in the way.

Suspense was mainly created in this film by the use of no non-diagetic sound- it was all down to the sounds on the set. The use of this builds great tension as the audience would not know what may happen next and giving them the effect that something may jump out and scare the viewer.

For me in particular, I found these three scenes very suspenseful:

1. Where Llewelyn finds all the dead bodies

This is near the beginning of the movie- the audience does not know what had happened. However the main character Llewelyn slowly discovers all the dead bodies and examining the place. We would expect something to jump out especially when he is opening the car doors which builds the tension as more and more dead bodies are being discovered.

2. Where Llewelyn anxiously focuses under the door, footsteps and shadows

In my opinion this is where it reached to its peak of climax- where Anton finally catches up to Llewelyn and is just outside the door, Llewelyn finds out at that point that the suitcase full of money had a tracker and he knows that his killer is just outside the door. This built suspense and tension from the camera focus of the shadows underneath the door where the audience knows Anton is just outside. The lighting is dark, the only digetic sound being his footsteps and heavy breathing. When Anton switches off the light it is almost pitch black, the audience's suspense is heightened as we can predict that at any moment he would blast the door down suddenly.

3. Where the sheriff was hesitating to open the motel room door

This is also a point where there was heightened tension and suspense- the audience can see cross cuts between the sheriff about to open the door, and to the serial killer Anton just behind it. The flow of this scene was slow- the hesitation of the sheriff about to open the door where we as a audience knows the consequences of doing so builds the tension even more so.