Opening to a Thriller analysis: Gone Girl

The film starts with an eerie hallowing music providing the underlying sound whilst the audience is shown a dark screen. Nick Dunne, the protagonist character begins to speak in what can be described as a mere, calm whisper saying “When I think of my wife, I always think of her head” which upon first impressions sounds as though Nick Dunne is a man devoted to loving his wife. As the audience we expect the protagonist to begin describing what he loves about her in a typical list fashion. This is revealed to not be the case as Nick Dunne slowly whispers “ I picture cracking her lovely skull”, this lets us as an audience know that the protagonist is a sick character, as he still uses a nice adjective to describe her skull, yet informs us he visions killing her brutally. This introduces the audience to the sick nature of the film, and gives us an insight about what to expect. Contradicting Nicks speech is an close up shot of his wife Amy Dunne, looking upwards, away from the camera so her eye line does not match the camera. This helps the audience infer however that she is looking admiringly at her husband, this is also supported by the fact she looks very seductive – wearing minimal clothing and showing a lot of skin.

After this shot, we are shown a series of quick images on the surrounding area, images of a window, old fashioned shots of a town looking deserted. From this we can assume that it is early morning in the town, a time when no one is about, which adds to the creepy atmosphere of the thriller. We are informed discreetly of the time, by a panning shot of a clock in the middle of the town, revealing the time to be 7am.This is followed by a shot of the main character, Nick, standing outside his house at this inferred early hour, next to his bins looking across the road which adds to the mentally unstable image we have already formed in our head of Nick.  The sound we here is the same sinister music, however the diegetic sound of Nick shutting his door is louder and takes up more of the audiences attention. Text appears on the screen saying “July 5^th: The morning off” which further makes the audience question what is happening. By not finishing the sentence this makes the audience ponder and guess what is significant about that morning, and adds to the suspense that has already been created by Nicks first speech. The shots then continue off Nick getting into a Black Range Rover and pulling up. We can infer that he is at a bar as there is a shot that precedes his entrance of a sign saying “The Bar” which is already strange and is a stark contrast to places people go in the morning.  The colour scheme seen throughout is dull and includes a lot of grey tones, the outfit of the woman Nick speaks to in the bar should contrast because her top is yellow however noticeably does not.