The Machinist

The opening scene of "The Machinist" helps us to establish the genre of the movie, we see a strange bruised and battered man wrapping a body with a carpet. However, this is a blurry wide shot, this gives the audience a sense of a dream like scene, as if the character was imagining the scene. This immediately establishes that the key genre of this movie is clearly a mystery thriller. We then see the strange character, in the next shot, getting the carpet out of the car and rolling it down in to the sea. Another man comes in to the scene and confronts the character. We do not see what happens to the character as the scene moves on to the disturbed man's close-up of him washing his hand. This shows a strong sense that the disturbed man may have done something terrible, as he continues desperately to use many cleaning product to clean his hand.

We then see an over the shoulder shot of the character looking into the mirror, this suggests that he is thinking hard and something significant is going to happen, he then turns around to see a post-it note on the wall which says "WHO ARE YOU?"....the scene then fades one.

The character we see is wearing a scruffy smart clothes, whereas his house seems to be very organised and clean. This shows is that the character is a very depressed and somewhat lonely, we also get a sense that this character is slightly psychologically disturbed. This may suggest that the movie will contain psychological factors, which again establishes the genre of the movie.

The ambient sound of the wind whistling in the background, while the slow eerie orchestra is played in the foreground. This creates a queer atmosphere which sets the uncomfortable and tension within the audience. Also while he is washing his hands, slow piano notes are played over the running water. This creates a more awkward, strange and curiosity feeling which leaves the audience confused.