Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
From watching the famous 'Shower Scene' from the Thriller Psycho, I can straight away see the gradual build up of suspense and mystery, which are vital qualities for a thriller film. The scene starts off very calm, as we see a woman go about her everyday life. As the scene continues, the audience are left on the edge of their seats as the non-diegetic music provides a gradual build up to the main part of the scene. The music starts very calm, while we see the woman at her desk, looking stressed by the way she acts as she sighs and rolls her eyes whilst doing work. As she going into the bathroom and closes the door, the music stops. This immediately gives a clear indication that something is going to happen as we see a contrast in mood. From this point onwards, there is little to no sound, apart from the diegetic noises such as the door shutting and the shower. The suspense fluctuates as we see a dark shadow started to emerge behind the curtain while the woman has her back to it. The camera gradually zooms into just the shadow, leaving the woman out of the shot, so as an audience we feel as if there if nothing we can do except wait for the moment something drastic happens. This keeps the audience focused and intrigued. Next thing we see is the shower curtain being pulled back and a man with a knife attacking the woman in the shower. To add to the shock of it, sharp high pitched sounds have been put in place to scare the audience, as well as diegetic sounds of the knife hitting the woman's skin. This frightens the audience and gives us a chill as its the moment we have been waiting for.
The Sixth Sense (Shyamalan, 1999)
This film starts with the opening credits ( director, producer, director of photography etc.) in a plain font on a black background with non-diegetic eerie music being played. As the credits are shown the music gets on louder while following onto the next scene. This gets the audience ready for the scene about to take place. We next see a light bulb gradually appear in the corner of the screen flickering, making the audience wonder what will happen next and adding a sense of mystery, but the audience may feel they need to prepare themselves in case they are scared by what is about to happen next.
White Bird in a Blizzard ( Gregg Araki, 2014)
Before we are shown the opening credits, this films starts with the mother lying on her daughters bed at 5 in the afternoon, and she looks hung over and tired. The daughter walks in questioning her mum, but her mum just walks out looking confused herself and says she needs to get dinner started. This immediately confusing the audience and already adds a sense of mystery. After this a voice over of the main character is played saying "I was seventeen when my mother disappeared". This tells the audience what happened, but leaving us with the mystery of how it happened. Then the opening credits are played whilst there is quite calm happy music in the background, which doesn't conform to the typical thriller genre opening, providing a contrast to what the audience would usually expect, leaving us wondering what will happen.
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